Example of Find & Open confusion

Using Find & Open… in the File menu, four files with the same name are listed in the Downloads folder, although no files with that name are in that folder.

Search for a file name which is in the Downloads folder but not listed, and one of these non-existent, non-matching file names remains listed.

The desired file (in this case Brava.P.240731.pandb) actually opens when Brava.pandb is double clicked, even though its name is not in the starting list.

Have seen this behaviour for months, and finally got around to reporting it,

The Find & Open dialog uses Apple’s Spotlight feature to generate the list of files. I’d say your Spotlight index is corrupted. I’m pretty sure there is a way to force the system to re-index Spotlight, but I don’t know what it is.

Thanks, Jim.

Instructions online at

Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

Had the same symptom occur months ago and reset of Spotlight cured it.