Macintosh Tip #6b
Finding Files—Part 2
Saving Your Searches—Smart Folders
In part one, we covered searching for files. Now you can find the files you want. So what happens when you want those same files tomorrow, or next week? Do you have to search all over again? Of course not. You can save your search, whether it is simple or complex, as a Smart Folder. The Save button was in many of the images we saw in Part 1.
The Save button in the Finder
Just click the save button and give your Smart Folder a name in the Save As sheet (a Sheet is what Apple calls the windows that slide down from an existing window, most often when using the Save As… and Print commands) that appears.
Now that we have a Smart Folder, how do we use it? You will notice that the Save sheet has an option to Add To Sidebar. This is checked by default.
Saving searches and adding to the Sidebar
If you leave this checked, the Smart Folder appears in the Search For section of the Sidebar. Now any time you want to use this search, just click the Smart Folder, and the search is performed. Let me repeat this. It performs the search again, it doesn’t save a static list of the found files and present that list each time. This makes Smart Folders very powerful.
Let’s assume you are working on a project that requires many files from many different applications. You could save all of these into the same folder and not have to search at all. Of course when you need a file from three other projects you are also working on, or perhaps from a past project, where do you save the files? Smart folder to the rescue, just search for common words, using the OR operator (explained in Part 1) then save the search. Now you quickly find all the files for the current project.
Perhaps you want a place to store all of the information about your vacation to Hawaii. You have travel itineraries, notes for the neighbor that is watching the house, lists of items to take with you, and of course photos and movies from the trip. A Smart Folder can have find them all, including the photos and movies stored in iPhoto and iMovie.
Searching Elsewhere in Mac OS X
Before we continue with Finding Files I want to make a brief mention other places you can search.Mac OS X provides the search field in the Finder, but take a look and you will see it in many other places as well (each time is is denoted by the magnifying glass icon). Some places you have probably used it already would be iPhoto, Mail and iCal. You can also search in Address Book, Automator, Dictionary, Font Book, and Preview. One place few people search is System Preferences. The search here is extra smart. If you want to change the Desktop background, you might not know that you use the Desktop System Preference to change this, so enter background in the search field,
Searching in System Preferences
and presto, the proper Desktop Preference Pane is highlighted. Type “power” and Energy Saver is highlighted. Some searches will highlight multiple choices, for instance, “monitor” will highlight Displays, Energy Saver, and Parental Controls. If you came to the Mac from Windows, you can type the name of a Windows Control Panel and the corresponding Preference Pane(s) will be highlighted.
Spotlight—Even Easier Searching
There is one other place you can search. The Spotlight Menu Extra. Although this is called Spotlight search, actually all of the searching in Mac OS X is done by Spotlight. The Spotlight Menu Extra is located at the far right side of the Menu Bar. Start by clicking the magnifying glass icon, or use the shortcut command-spacebar.
Spotlight Search Field
From here you can search for just about anything. Spotlight searches will find files, just like the Finder searches we have been discussing, but it will also find Applications, email messages, definitions, iCal appointments, contacts from Address Book, web pages from Safari’s bookmarks and history, images from iPhoto, tracks from iTunes, and more. If you see the item you are looking for, just click it. If you want to see where it is stored, hold the command key as you click it. This will open a Finder window with the selected item highlighted.
Spotlight Results
This makes it very easy to lookup a phone number, for instance. Just type command-space and the name of the person you want to call. Now select them from the results. Perhaps you want to check the definition of a word, once again, type command-space, then the word you want defined. Spotlight even shows part of the definition in the results menu.
One last very powerful use for Spotlight search is to launch an application. There are probably plenty of applications in your Dock, but there are others that you might use very often. When you want to use one, you can open a Finder window, then click Applications in the sidebar, then scroll through the list and finally double-click the application you are looking for. Using Spotlight, you can type command-space, and start typing the name of the application. When enough of the application has been typed to make it the Top Hit, just click return to launch the application.
Use Spotlight to launch applications
Special Searching
You can use the same search tricks mentioned in Part 1 to help find the item you are looking for, i.e. Boolean searches using AND, OR, and NOT, or using quotation marks around a phrase. There are other search tips that work in Finder searches and here as well. You can search for a type of file by typing kind:wordtosearh replacing wordtosearch with your search word, such as kind:pdf. You can use name: to find a file by name. To search by date, use created: or modified: not date. You can then enter a date, but you can also use >12/5/09 to find files modified or created after 12/5/09. These date related searches also except today, yesterday, etc. These are best used with a boolean search to help narrow down a long list of items.
Fun Trick with Spotlight
There are a few other tricks up Spotlight’s sleeve when accessed from the Spotlight Menu. For Instance it can be used as a quick calculator.
Spotlight as a calculator
You might notice that it even supports the proper order of operands. If you type return at this point Spotlight will open the Calculator. It will even perform “power of” functions (use ^ to mean “power of”). So that 2^3+1 will give you the result 9.
These screen shots are all from 10.6 aka Snow Leopard. You will see some variation if you are using an earlier OS.
