When macOS Spotlight doesn’t find files in the current folder

Just went to scan some negatives and was about to make a new folder for them. At some point in the past I chose the unfortunate folder-naming convention of:

yyyy-mm-dd FilmShorthand-RollNumber CameraBrand CameraModel FilmManufacturer FilmType

which results in things like this:

2022-12-31 trix-0036 leica m2 kodak tri-x 400

I guess it works in that it’s sorted by the date of the first exposure (if I can recall it) and then the trix-0036 part is a uniquely sequenced proxy for a roll number.

When I want to start a new folder, I have to look for the highest roll number in my film scans inbox folder and add 1 to it. Spotlight usually works fine for that, but just now I saw that trix-0036 roll in there and wanted to make sure there wasn’t a something-0037 roll that I missed. Spotlight didn’t report a 0037 match when searching the Name of items in that film scans folder, but it also couldn’t find the 0036 match, though I could plainly see the matching folder sitting in there.

The fix is to tell Spotlight to exclude the folder (or the drive) from search, then re-add it. I didn’t have to exclude my whole drive — only the folder in question — but still. Isn’t this the kind of thing you’d expect Windows to do, and on macOS it should just work?

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