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Spotlight
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Opening
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I often see or hear people complaining that Spotlight is "broken".
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I happen to be a big fan of Spotlight and I think on the whole it works fairly well.
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I also think that some of the "broken" things that people encounter can be fixed with a little more advanced knowledge of how Spotlight works and some of the tricks you can use to find things and make your result more relevant.
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Spotlight Menubar
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Typically clicking on a result opens that item, but what if you want to open the folder containing that items to see where it is in the Finder?
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Hit Command + Enter on the highlighted file in Spotlight to open it’s location in a new Finder window.
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Use Command+I on a highlighted item to get info on it right from Spotlight result
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In Lion you can drag item directly out of the results
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Drop directly onto an app in the dock to open in that app
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Drag out to make a copy of that file (notice the "+" icon)
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Hold Command+Option to create an Alias
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In Lion, you get the preview when you hover, but it has it's own tricks
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If you press and hold the Command key it will pop-up the Preview of the Top Hit
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Hold down the command key to get a scrolling list of additional info at the bottom of the preview window
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Path to file
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Matched metadata information
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Mailbox
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Press Command-Option to see the path instantly.
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Some file types can have interaction
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Contact field labels can be clicked (just like in Address Book) for additional info
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Spotlight Finder Window
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Accessed from the Finder, using Command+F or Option+Command+Space from anywhere
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You can change this setting in System Preferences > Spotlight
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Set the 'Spotlight Window Keyboard Shortcut'
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Top of the Window offer 3 search locations
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This Mac (default), the current folder or volume you initiated the search from, and I have the 'Shared' folder
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Click the small + button right next to “Save”, you can add additional search parameters.
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File kind: Here you can select the kind of file you are looking for. This allows you to, for example, specifically search for PDF files only
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Last opened date: This is the time the file was last opened/read
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Last modified date: This is the time the file was last written and therefore changed
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Created date: This is the time the file was initially created
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Name: This is the file name only
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Contents: These are the contents of the file itself, which is particularly helpful for text documents such as PDFs or Word files.
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Other…: a large list of other options
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You can scroll through the list or search
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The "In Menu" checkbox allows you to add you frequently used parameters to the main list
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Two very useful ones I think are 'System files' and 'File visibility'
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You can add additional search parameters by clicking the "+" button
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Hold the alt key, you will see that the + button turned into an ellipsis (…), then you can add boolean style parameters. Options are Any, All, or None of the conditions are met.
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General search query tips
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Typing words will search for ALL of those words by default.
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You can require exact matches to multiple words or a phrase by using enclosing quotes
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Boolean keyword operators are also supported AND, OR, NOT. Typed in upper case. You can use parenthesis to group them
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adding a "-" without a space in front of a term just like 'NOT;
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Going Meta
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Metadata keywords are the key to Spotlight searching power
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There are 125 and growing and learning some of these will help you a lot.
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The basic syntax is: AttributeType:attribute
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The attribute type can often be guessed by looking at the Get Info on a file and specifically the 'More Info' section.
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Pretty much any term you see listed there could be used as a AttributeType. Just type it all lowercase with no spaces followed by the ":"
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There is also a great PDF document at hints.macworld.com
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Some helpful metadata keywords
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kind:
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image, PDF, message or email, event, contact
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date:
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You can use terms like "today","yesterday","this week", or dates and date ranges (i.e. 2010-2011)
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name:
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contains:
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width:
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dpi:
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subject:
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from: or to:
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You can combine these to create some powerful results
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kind:contact name:[Persons Name]
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kind:jpeg width:600
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kind:email date:"this week" from:[email address]
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Super Nerdy Command Line Stuff
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Open up Terminal. Applications > Utilities > Terminal
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mdfind command to search
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Type 'mdfind 'search term' and hit enter
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If you need to exit the results before they finish hit Control+C
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Of course you can do all the command line goodies like piping results of searches, etc.
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There are several options of course, but a helpful one is '-onlyin [folder]' restricts the search to that specific folder.
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Rebuild Spotlight index
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Apple's way:
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From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
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Click Spotlight.
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Click the Privacy tab.
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Drag a folder or even an entire volume (your hard drive) to the list.
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Remove the item or volume you just added.
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From the Terminal use the command:
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sudo mdutil -E /
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Then enter your admin password. It will take a moment and then return: "Indexing enabled. "
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After that you should see the Spotlight Indexing animation in the menu bar.
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