JUNE 2019 MACWORLD 93sudden I’m searching only for image files
with the word “logo” in their filename. It’s
fast and convenient.
By default, the Finder limits searches to
the current folder you’re in, but you can
click the This Mac button in the toolbar of
the Finder window to expand the search
to your entire Mac. (If you prefer to start
with a search of the entire Mac, go to
Finder: Preferences, click the Advanced
tab, and change When Performing a
Search to “Search This Mac.”)
The Finder window can also be a
powerful multi-query search tool itself (go.
macworld.com/advn). Below the Search
toolbar, you’ll see a default search term of
“Kind is Any.” You can modify this term to
specify a file type (like Image), or change it
to an entirely different term. This is a great
way to search for files in a specific date
range, by using the “Created date” field.
And underneath the Other... option is a
vast galaxy of different metadata types you
can search on, including camera data like
flash and focal length.
NOT JUST THE FINDER
What you might not know is that other
apps take advantage of Spotlight, too.
Searching for text in a PDF in Preview, for
example, uses the Spotlight index of your
PDF. Mail’s search is based on searching
individually downloaded email messages
within a hidden folder. (Which is why you
can also use Spotlight to find Mail
messages, incidentally.)
This can lead to some quirky behavior,
including something a friend ran into the
other week. He was searching for text in a
bunch of PDFs from within Preview, and
coming up empty—even though he knew
the text he was searching for was there.
The fix turned out to be a pretty obscure
one: I had him open the Spotlight pane of
System Preferences, click on the Privacy
tab, and drag his folder full of PDFs into
the tab. Then I had him remove the folder
and wait a moment for Spotlight to
re-index all the files in that folder.
This solved the problem. When in
doubt, adding a folder to the Privacy tab
(which is, of course, also useful if there are
items you never want to show up inDrag a folder into Spotlight’s Privacy pane
to delete its index, then remove it to force a
re-index.