What to do when Prism files are not indexed by Spotlight (Mac only)

Spotlight lets you instantly find files in your computer by searching for text within the file.  It will find text anywhere in the file (sheet names, graph and axis titles, legends, text objects, equations, notes, info constants, row and column titles, custom ticks, floating notes, and template descriptions). Just click the Spotlight icon, and type the text you are looking for. Spotlight will instantly show you all files (including Prism files) that contain that text.

Problem 1: Files do not appear when searching by text content (searching by Prism file name may still work). This is a very rare problem. It can occur when two (or more) versions of the Prism Spotlight are installed on your computer and Spotlight gets confused.

Prroblem 2: Only .PZF files are indexed by content, not .PZFX. Until release 6.0e, the indexer installed with Prism only indexed .PZF files. With 6.0e, Prism includes an indexer that also indexes .PZFX files. 

The fix for both problems requires entering commands into Terminal, so you may want to get help from an IT person or a geek. Follow these steps

1. Check that only one Prism program is installed.  If not, delete the redundant copies. Instructions on how to uninstall Prism can be found here. Continue with step 2 and beyond only if you are running Prism 6 (or later). 

2. Delete Spotlight plugin at path "/Library/Spotlight/GraphPad Prism.mdimporter" if it exists. This is an older version of the Spotlight plugin, so should be deleted.

3. Reindex all Prism documents using the following command in Terminal:

4. To make sure the correct version of the indexer plugin is used by Spotlight, run the following command in Terminal:

The command should output exactly one line containing a path to a location inside Prism 6.0e bundle, e.g.,

      /Applications/Prism 6.app/Contents/Library/Spotlight/GraphPad Prism.mdimporter

If the output of the command has more than one line or refers to an older version of Prism, go back to step 1 and try again.

5. Try to search for Prism documents by content using Spotlight.

If the above steps do not help, enter the following command into Terminal and send us its output: