Am I not understanding 'Contents contain' correctly?

I want to make a rule that tags documents depending on their status of completion. So I made a rule that if

'Contents" contain ~~Status: Edit
They will be tagged with Status:Edit and coloured blue. However it didn't work so I tried something simple:

'Contents' 'contain' a
To tag the item purple. Nothing happened. I looked for a fix on these forums but couldn't find anything. Am I mistaken on this functionality or is something wrong?

Thanks

Did you email support about this? If so, please only email or post, not both as I end up having to type answers out twice.

"Contents contains" uses Spotlight. So, whatever you are matching in the condition would be the equivalent of searching for it in Spotlight. In that case, everything you entered has to match on the word level and the letter "a" is actually the word "a". Words like "a", "the", etc. are filtered out by Spotlight as being insignificant. As for your original text, try a Spotlight search using that text.

I can find them in Spotlight, but Hazel still won't tag them. I am talking about documents with the phrase ~~Status: Edit in it.

I didn't email support.

Searching for phrases is a bit odd when using "Contents contains". I suggest using "Contents contain match" instead as that will force a direct search of the file. It will be a little slower, depending on the size of the file, but it's much more reliable.