Outlook 16.23.1 not searching correctly on Mojave 10.14.4

Anonymous
2019-04-04T21:28:30+00:00

I've had intermittent problems where the search function in Outlook on my Mac would stop working. In the past, I had a reliable fix that I found somewhere online; I ran the following in Terminal:

mdimport -g ‘/Applications/Microsoft Outlook.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/Microsoft Outlook Spotlight Importer.mdimporter’ -d1 ‘/Users/USERNAME/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/Main Profile’

... where USERNAME was the home directory name on my Mac. This took a while to run, but worked like a charm every time.

But I recently upgraded to Mac OS 10.14.4 (Mojave), and apparently this command is no longer supported in Terminal. Now when I try to run it, I get the error:

'-g' no longer supported. Importers may only be tested by installing them.

To be honest, I don't really know what the "-g" parameter means. Any ideas on how to resolve? I'm a bit out of my depth here and don't want to do something that makes things worse.

Outlook | MacOS | Legacy Outlook for Mac | For home

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  1. Anonymous
    2020-02-18T02:12:16+00:00

    This is how I fixed this annoying issue for my env:

    • Outlook 16.34
    • Catalina 10.15.3

    mdimport -i ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook\ 15\Profiles/Main\ Profile/Data/Tasks/

    find ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook\ 15\Profiles/Main\ Profile/Data/Messages/ -type f -mtime -2 -exec mdimport -i "{}" ;

    I wish you the best.

    Slight typo in those commands; both paths are missing a space between "15" and "Profiles".  Here's the corrected commands:

    mdimport -i ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook\ 15\ Profiles/Main\ Profile/Data/Tasks/

    find ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook\ 15\ Profiles/Main\ Profile/Data/Messages/ -type f -mtime -2 -exec mdimport -i "{}" ;

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  2. Anonymous
    2020-02-17T19:02:39+00:00

    This is how I fixed this annoying issue for my env:

    • Outlook 16.34
    • Catalina 10.15.3

    mdimport -i ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook\ 15\Profiles/Main\ Profile/Data/Tasks/

    find ~/Library/Group\ Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook\ 15\Profiles/Main\ Profile/Data/Messages/ -type f -mtime -2 -exec mdimport -i "{}" ;

    I wish you the best.

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  3. Anonymous
    2020-02-01T12:31:40+00:00

    I tried all of the steps mentioned here, and also some steps on other sites. Nothing worked.

    So, as a last ditch effort, I dragged the "MainProfile" folder out of the "Outlook 15 Profiles" and put it on the desktop. 

    Then waited about 2 seconds, then dragged it back into the "Outlook 15 Profiles" folder.

    Immediately fixed the problem.

    Hope this helps.

    THIS IS THE FIX!!!!  Hours and hours, deleting this, reinstalling that.....

    Do EXACTLY what Giles says...voilà!!!

    System: Catalina 10.15.2, Mac Outlook 16.33

    What caused my issue?  Migrating to new Mac from Time Machine.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-12-27T15:38:24+00:00

    It is still unacceptable that Microsoft and Apple doesn't solve this problem together.

    I buy software, to avoid this kind of problems.

    Maybe I can better use open source software, they have a faster and better support then a billion dollar company as Microsoft.

    @Microsoft please solve this problem.

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-12-27T14:14:43+00:00

    This has been working for me since I last fixed. Now, since last week, it sopped working again. Tried everything I've done before and nothing is working. I even deleted all my accounts and added them again. Nothing. MS marked the issue as solved but this clearly hasn't been resolved yet.

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