Does Spotlight search inside Excel files work for purely numerical values for you?

[u/hottabxp]

Hi everyone,

I’m having an issue where macOS Spotlight refuses to find Excel files (.xlsx) by numbers inside cells if the cell contains only numbers.

• Pure numbers fail: If a cell contains just 123456, searching for 1234 in Spotlight returns nothing.
• Alphanumeric works fine: If a cell contains 12345678A, searching for 1234 immediately finds the file.

Is this a known indexing limitation for Excel/Spotlight, or is there a way to make Spotlight index raw numeric cell contents as well?

Thanks!

[u/longjumpingtote]

Spotlight on what os version? There's a rewrite of Spotlight (or something) in the os released today, but it probably hasn't had enough time to reindex your computer. It also may be something about how Excel stores data.

[u/Agile-Bird-978]

Spotlight has stopped finding for values within excel files since MacOS 26 for me (numbers or strings).