I’m trying to get Obsidian to return all files in my repository when doing a search. For example, “vinyl shopping.md” exists in my repo. If I use the “files” function on the upper left I can browse to this file and open it in Obsidian. If I use “Go to file” that also works. But if I type “vinyl” into search, nothing returns. This used to work. Do I need to perform some kind of re-index operation?
It’s worth noting that I sync my repo with git across several Macs and Linux systems.
Things I have tried
I’ve done some searching on the internet with no luck.
I’ve closed/re-opened the app
I’ve run ‘reload without saving’ in the cmd palette
I’ve uninstalled Obsidian.app from /Applications and reinstalled from web
I’ve tried the above with the 4 community plugins I use disabled (Calendar, DataView, Natural Lang Dates, Templater)
Well, I’ve re-indexed my large-ish vault at least 15 times since using the app. Granted, I performed a lot of global search and replace jobs and I liked to start with a clean slate.
It wouldn’t hurt for you to learn how to do this.
Quit Obsidian. On Linux (on Mac it will be something similar I reckon*), head to /home/user/.config/obsidian
Move these folders to the trash:
Cache
Code Cache
DawnCache
GPUCache
IndexedDB
Storage
Restart Obsidian
It will re-index your vault.
Hopefully, it will help you solve the problem.
* On Windows the folder is at C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\obsidian
All commands ran fine, no errors. Brought Obsidian back up and realized my issue might not be one of indexing, but rather a problem with case sensitive search. In that magnifying glass search function in the upper left, it’s case sensitve and searching for “vinyl” won’t get a hit on a file named “Vinyl Shopping.md” But In “Go to file” it’s case insensitive and that search will work. I have been expecting them both to work the same way. I see I can toggle case sensitivity with the “Aa” icon next to the magnifying glass. But it looks like I can’t toggle case insensitive as the default option.
This must have changed in one of the versions that got updated since I started using Obsidian b/c I don’t seem to recall ever having that issue.
Anyway, thanks for the commands on the re-index. They will surely come in handy at some time.
Yeah, that’s a pain.
I have twenty-odd bookmarked search queries that I use to look for English texts I’m yet to translate. E.g. for files in folder ‘A’: -path: /[B-Z]/// -path: meta/ -tag:#englishtexttranslated -/status:\sdg_uploaded/ /^.*(\b(that|he|she|was|were|have|are|they|with|this|not|but|from|by|if|how|where|when|why|of)\b)[^áéíóöőúüű].*/
And of course I have no results unless I hit Match Case. It’s a good way to practice, actually. Will keep you sharp.
On a side note, I also don’t relish having to do the workaround of excluding all other folders to get the result count right, but that’s another matter…
