[petonic]

Hi All --

I've never had OmniFocus tasks show up in a spotlight search. They didn't show up when I was using SnowLeopard nor are they showing up in Lion. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong? I don't even know how to start debugging this... a Google of "Omnifocus Spotlight not working" doesn't show anything relevant.

Any ideas on how I can start to debug this?

Thanks,
-Mike

[CatOne]

The Spotlight integration is a bit confusing. The individual tasks will not be shown: What's shown in the Spotlight results is the project name that contains the task. If you select the project in the Spotlight results, a new window will open up in OmniFocus with the specific term selected.

I don't know that this is ideal, but it's "working," given this is how the Omni folks told me it was supposed to work. Can you confirm you have NO results in the list at all?

[petonic]

Thanks for your quick response, CatOne. ATM, I am reindexing Spotlight (just to be sure) so I can't tell you definitively, but I'm pretty sure (99.9%) that nothing is showing up for OmniFocus under Spotlight. Not even the project names :-(. I don't believe I've ever seen an OmniFocus datatype (of any sorts) in Spotlight.

I'll let you know more as my index finishes.

Thanks again!

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by petonic

Thanks for your quick response, CatOne. ATM, I am reindexing Spotlight (just to be sure) so I can't tell you definitively, but I'm pretty sure (99.9%) that nothing is showing up for OmniFocus under Spotlight. Not even the project names :-(. I don't believe I've ever seen an OmniFocus datatype (of any sorts) in Spotlight.

I'll let you know more as my index finishes.

Thanks again!

Note you can verify that the metadata files that should be read by Spotlight exist.

They are stored in your ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/com.omnigroup.OmniFocus directory. A bunch of !#$^!#$^.ofocus-project-metadata files.

[rogbar]

I just tested my Spotlight - entered the name of an OF project, and sure enough it showed up under Documents. Clicked on it, and an OF window opened up for that project.

[petonic]

Hi CatOne -- Yes, I have all of the *.ofocus-project-metadata files in that directory. About 59 of them or so, and they're fairly up to date.

When I CMD-DOWN into a file, it brings up the project view in OF, so I know that it can open. I just dont' think that they're being indexed. Isn't there some sort of MDMImport file or something that is supposed to be configured with OmniFocus to work with Spotlight?


Hi Rogbar -- I am not getting anything in my Spotlight Documents section when I enter an OF project name. :-(

Thanks!

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by petonic

Hi CatOne -- Yes, I have all of the *.ofocus-project-metadata files in that directory. About 59 of them or so, and they're fairly up to date.

When I CMD-DOWN into a file, it brings up the project view in OF, so I know that it can open. I just dont' think that they're being indexed. Isn't there some sort of MDMImport file or something that is supposed to be configured with OmniFocus to work with Spotlight?


Hi Rogbar -- I am not getting anything in my Spotlight Documents section when I enter an OF project name. :-(

Thanks!

Well you can see if Spotlight is importing it. Open a terminal window and type:

mdimport -L

You should see a big list of stuff. In the list should be OmniFocus:

... "/Applications/OmniFocus.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/OmniFocusMetadataImporter.mdimporter",
…

You could try to tell Spotlight to re-import the OmniFocus files (this is all on one line):

mdimport -r "/Applications/OmniFocus.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/OmniFocusMetadataImporter.mdimporter"

And if you want to test, put some text in an entry in OmniFocus (I always use xyzzy) and then from a terminal try something like 'mdfind xyzzy' I just did it and got this:

Frygar:~ blloyd$ mdfind xyzzy
/Users/blloyd/Library/Caches/Metadata/com.omnigroup.OmniFocus/hXM71KXLKfG.ofocus-project-metadata

I realize this is kinda low-level-down-in-the-weeds Spotlight but it's what I've got ;-)

[petonic]

Well, heck. Now it's working... I did the low-level stuff (thanks, CatOne) and similar to fixing electronics by just opening up the thing and tweaking things around, it worked.

I appreciate the low-level commands (ex-UNIX hacker from the 80's here) and I totally appreciate the Adventure reference (xyzzy).

Thanks again for your help, CatOne!

-Mike