Chapter 7
In This Chapter
Mastering basic Spotlight searching skills
Selecting text and keywords for best results
Displaying results in the Spotlight window
Customizing Spotlight settings in System Preferences
What would you say if I told you that you could search your entire system for virtually every piece of data connected with a person — and in only the short time it takes to type that person’s name? And I’m not just talking about files and folders that might include that person’s name. I mean every e-mail message and every Calendar event that references that person — and even that person’s Contacts card, to boot? Heck, how about if that search could dig up every occurrence of the person’s name inside PDF documents? What if it could even search folders shared on other Macs across your network?
You’d probably say, “That makes for good future tech — I’ll bet I can do that in five or ten years. It’ll take Apple at least that long to do it … and just in time for me to buy a new iMac! (Harrumph.)”
Don’t be so hasty: You can do all this right now. The technology is the OS X feature named Spotlight, built right into Mavericks. In this chapter, I show you how to use it like an iMac power guru.
Figure 7-1 illustrates the Spotlight search field, which is always available from the Finder menu bar. Click the magnifying glass icon once (or press +Spacebar), and the Spotlight search box appears.
To run a search, simply click in the Spotlight box and begin typing. (The words you type that you want to match are keywords.) Matching items start appearing as soon as you type, and the search results are continually refined while you type the rest of your search keywords. In other words, you don’t need to press Return to begin your search.
The results of your Spotlight search appear in the Spotlight menu, which is updated automatically in real time while you continue to type. The top 20 most-relevant items are grouped into categories — such as Messages, Definitions, Documents, Folders, Images, PDFs, and Contacts, right on the Spotlight menu. Spotlight takes a guess at the item that’s most likely the match you’re looking for (based on your Search Results list in System Preferences, which I cover later in the chapter) and presents it in the special Top Hit category that always appears first.
Literally any text string is acceptable as a Spotlight search. However, here’s a short list of the common search criteria I use every day:
To reset the Spotlight search and try another text string, click the X icon that appears at the right side of the Spotlight box. Of course, you can also backspace to the beginning of the field, but that’s a little less elegant, so try pressing +A to select the entire contents and then press Delete.
After you find the item you’re looking for, you can click it once to
Don’t get fooled into simply using Spotlight as another file-’n-folder-name search tool. Sure, it can do that, but Spotlight can also search inside PDF, Pages, Word documents, and HTML files, finding matching text that doesn’t appear in the name of the file. To wit: A search for Mavericks on my system pulls up all sorts of items not only with Mavericks in their names but also files with Mavericks in them. For example
Apple Store SF.ppt
: A PowerPoint presentation with several slides containing the text Mavericksbk01ch03.doc
: A rather cryptically named Microsoft Word file chapter of another For Dummies book of mine that mentions Mavericks in several spotsNot one of these three examples actually has the word Mavericks occurring anywhere in the title or filename, yet Spotlight found them because they all contain the text Mavericks therein. That, dear reader, is the true power of Spotlight, and how it can literally guarantee you that you’ll never lose another piece of information that Spotlight can locate in the hundreds of thousands of files and folders on your hard drive!
Heck, suppose that all you remember about a file is that you received it in your mail last week or last month. To find it, you can actually type time periods, such as yesterday, last week, or last month, to see every item that you saved or received within that period. (Boy, howdy, I love writing about TGIs — that’s short for Truly Good Ideas.)
Be careful, however, when you’re considering a search string. Don’t forget that (by default) Spotlight matches only those items that have all the words you enter in the Spotlight box. To return the highest number of possible matches, use the fewest number of words that will identify the item; for example, use horse rather than horse image, and you’re certain to be rewarded with more hits. On the other hand, if you’re looking specifically for a picture of a knight on horseback, using a series of keywords — such as horse knight image — shortens your search considerably. It all depends on what you’re looking for and how widely you want to cast your Spotlight net.
To allow greater flexibility in searches, Apple also includes those helpful Boolean friends that you may already be familiar with: AND, OR, and NOT. For example, you can perform Spotlight searches, such as
I can just hear the announcer’s voice now: “But wait, there’s more! If you click the Show in Finder menu item at the beginning of your search results, we’ll expand your Spotlight menu into the Spotlight window!” (Fortunately, you don’t have to buy some ridiculous household doodad.)
Figure 7-2 illustrates the Spotlight window (which is actually a Finder window with extras). To further filter the search, click one of the buttons on the Spotlight window toolbar or create your own custom filter. Click the button with the plus sign (upper right) to display the search criteria bar and then click the pop-up menus to choose from criteria, such as the type of file, the text content, or the location on your system (for example, your hard drive, your Home folder, or a network server). You can also filter your results listing by the date when the items were created or last saved. To add or delete criteria, click the plus and minus buttons at the right side of the search criteria bar. To save a custom filter that you’ve created, click the Save button.
Images appear as thumbnail icons, so you can use that most sophisticated search tool — the human eye — to find the picture you’re looking for. (If you don’t see thumbnail images, click the Icon view button on the toolbar.) Don’t forget that you can increase or decrease the size of the icons by dragging the slider at the bottom right of the window.
Again, when you’re ready to open an item, just double-click it in the Spotlight window.
As I mention earlier, Spotlight can look for matching items on other Macs on your network only if those remote Macs are configured correctly. To allow another Mac running OS X Tiger 10.5 (or later) to be visible to Spotlight on your system, enable File Sharing on the other Mac. (Oh, and remember that you need an admin-level account on that Mac — or access to a good friend who has an admin-level account on that Mac.)
Follow these steps to enable file sharing on the other Mac:
You might guess that such an awesome OS X feature has its own pane in System Preferences — and you’d be right again. Figure 7-3 shows off the Spotlight pane in System Preferences: Click the System Preferences icon on the Dock and then click the Spotlight icon to display these settings.
Click the Search Results tab to
Click the Privacy tab (shown in Figure 7-4) to specify disks and folders that should never be listed as results in a Spotlight search. I know, I know — I said earlier that Spotlight respected your security, and it does. However, the disks and folders that you add to this list won’t appear even if you are the one performing the search, so the exclusion is absolute. This is a great idea for folders and removable hard drives that you use to store sensitive information, such as medical records.
To add locations that you want to keep private, click the Add button (bearing a plus sign) and navigate to the desired location. Click the location to select it, and then click Choose. Alternatively, you can drag folders or disks directly from a Finder window and drop them into the pane.