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
    2019-04-06T04:22:37+00:00

    Huni - step 7 of the link you provided suggests that I do precisely what my original question is about. Namely, that when I run the mdimport -g command in Mac OS 10.14.4 (Mojave), I get an error that the "-g" parameter is no longer supported. Specifically ...

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

    This was the question I initially posed.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-05-30T14:29:21+00:00

    FYI, This problem seems to be resolved for my after upgrading to MacOS 10.14.5 and reindexing the outlook profile (see below steps).

    After updating Mac OS to v10.14.5, you can re-add the account and check the result. If the issue persists, perform the following steps mentioned below to re-index the Outlook data folder and check if it resolves the issue. First let's quit Outlook completely and then open 'Terminal' and then copy - paste the below mentioned command:

    sudo mdutil -E /

    It will prompt for your Mac password. Please enter it and wait for it to complete. You will see 'Indexing enabled' message. Once this is done, re-index the Outlook data folder and check the behavior. Please, Quit Outlook completely and then try these steps:

    1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Spotlight.
    2. Click the Privacy tab.
    3. In Finder:

    a. On the Go menu click Go to Folder...

    b. Copy and paste the following location into the "Go to the folder:" dialog box and click Go:

    ~/Library/Group Containers/UBF8T346G9.Office/Outlook/Outlook 15 Profiles/

    1. Drag the ‘Main Profile’ folder to the Privacy tab. Once added, remove the folder, and Spotlight will re-index the folder. Note: You must perform this step for any additional profile folders you may have. The status of the re-indexing is not shown anywhere. so you need to wait for some time and check the result.

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  4. Anonymous
    2019-06-04T21:46:14+00:00

    Thank you for this post. I had a similar issue but not caused during the update but after a Time Machine installation on a new Mac. Outlook did not search. I tried everything from this post and other posts as well. Only solution that managed to work for me was to delete Outlook App, delete Outlook containers and profiles. Just like written in here but only the Outlook part: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/uninstall-office-for-mac-eefa1199-5b58-43af-8a3d-b73dc1a8cae3 Afterwards I reinstalled Outlook and now it works just fine. It was a long process but I couldn't manage in any other way.

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-04-07T16:36:56+00:00

    I don't see how I can continue to use Outlook if I can't search my mail.

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