[nycdunz]

you can type in kind:x

x = images for jpg, psd, gif, png, etc
x = audio for mp3, m4a, aac, wav, aiff, etc
x = document for .doc, .txt etc

you can also do

date:x

x = yesterday
x = today

there's more, can somebody please post a complete list of keywords you can use in spotlight to further refine searches?

[CKr]

kind:email

[murk]

kind: pron

[kman42]

where: ?

[gururafiki]

You type this in Spotlight?

[Evinyatar]

Note that you have to enter this query in your system's preferred language. So if you have Dutch set as your main language you would have to enter 'soort:afbeeldingen' instead of 'kind:images'. Also works when entered in Finder's search box.

[Mithras]

Originally Posted by Evinyatar

'soort:afbeeldingen'

Dear God.

[Goldfinger]

Originally Posted by Mithras

Dear God.

What?

[kman42]

Can you do 'Kind:excel' or 'kind: word'?

[kman42]

How about 'when: last week'?

[wtmcgee]

Very cool find.

I think over time we'll see a TON of these type of search strings added to spotlight to make it even more functional. Heck, it may be extensible where we can change it ourselves. Looking forward to finding these things out.

[CaptainHaddock]

Originally Posted by Evinyatar

Note that you have to enter this query in your system's preferred language. So if you have Dutch set as your main language you would have to enter 'soort:afbeeldingen' instead of 'kind:images'. Also works when entered in Finder's search box.

That's interesting. I can see Apple evolving Spotlight into a powerful natural-language search tool. It's going to take a lot of ingenuity and testing to make this usable and intuitive for any computer user, but if anyone can do it, it's Apple.

Although programmer types might not like the idea of a language-dependant syntax, I think the idea of typing these keywords in your native language is pretty cool. Ultimately, though, you'd probably want to find a way to do it without keywords at all, since that's still a usability hurdle. A French speaker should just be able to type something like "fichiers images cette semaine fleurs" to see all his latest files and images that are related to flowers.

[Weyland-Yutani]

Originally Posted by Evinyatar

Note that you have to enter this query in your system's preferred language. So if you have Dutch set as your main language you would have to enter 'soort:afbeeldingen' instead of 'kind:images'. Also works when entered in Finder's search box.

Spanish 'clase:im�genes'

etc�tera

[kman42]

Can someone clarify exactly what keywords are allowed in addition to 'Kind:' and 'Date:'? Also, can one use phrases with 'Date:', as in 'Date: this week'? Can one use application names with 'Kind:', for instance 'Kind:excel'?

thanks,
kman

[chris v]

Originally Posted by Evinyatar

Nsoort:afbeeldingen'

Bless you! Handkerchief?

[kman42]

Originally Posted by kman42

Can someone clarify exactly what keywords are allowed in addition to 'Kind:' and 'Date:'? Also, can one use phrases with 'Date:', as in 'Date: this week'? Can one use application names with 'Kind:', for instance 'Kind:excel'?

thanks,
kman

Can someone answer this?

[workerbee]

Originally Posted by chris v

Bless you! Handkerchief?

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by kman42

Can someone clarify exactly what keywords are allowed in addition to 'Kind:' and 'Date:'? Also, can one use phrases with 'Date:', as in 'Date: this week'? Can one use application names with 'Kind:', for instance 'Kind:excel'?

thanks,
kman

You can probably do something like Kind:.doc or Extension:.xls or something. You can do it with the current find tool in Panther I don't see why they'd take that out of Tiger.

[Mithras]

Yeah, for one particular document type I think it's easier just to type .xls as your search.
The kind: <foo> is for including a bunch of different types (.jpg + .png + .tiff etc.)

[xi_hyperon]

Tiger KP'd while Spotlight was indexing my Powerbook. How do I know that it will continue indexing where it left off before the KP? Is there a way to run the indexing function again?

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by xi_hyperon

Tiger KP'd while Spotlight was indexing my Powerbook. How do I know that it will continue indexing where it left off before the KP? Is there a way to run the indexing function again?

It will pick up automatically. If not, and you want to do a clean index, you'd use mdutil from the command line. For example:

sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/DriveName

Would erase and rebuild the Spotlight index for the drive that showed up as DriveName on the desktop. If you have Macintosh HD as the name you'd need to use quotes:

sudo mdutil -E "/Volumes/Macintosh HD"

Takes a couple hours, probably.

[xi_hyperon]

Originally Posted by CatOne

It will pick up automatically. If not, and you want to do a clean index, you'd use mdutil from the command line. For example:

sudo mdutil -E /Volumes/DriveName

Would erase and rebuild the Spotlight index for the drive that showed up as DriveName on the desktop. If you have Macintosh HD as the name you'd need to use quotes:

sudo mdutil -E "/Volumes/Macintosh HD"

Takes a couple hours, probably.

Thanks!

[xealous]

So am I completely buggered if i get the following result when running mdutil -i:

ana�s:~ root# mdutil -i on "/Volumes/tigger"
/Volumes/tigger:
Could not set indexing status for volume.

and mdutil -p produces:

ana�s:~ root# mdutil -p "/Volumes/tigger"
/Volumes/tigger:
Index not published, error -1

[Chris Grande]

A lot of people want a easy way to add metadata to files, well I kind of developed a easy enough way. Using the new "Spotlight Commnets" field (its just the normal coments field with a new blue UI). Of course trying to type in the same thing in; for example if you wanted to mark 50 files urgent would be crazy - enter Automater and its "add spotlight comment" action. Just create a Workflow using just that action and enter your term "Urgent" and have the "Append to coments" box checked. Then save it out as a app, put it in the dock in the finder sidebar or toolbar and just drag and drop your files onto it, and there you go. Want a quick way to erase those commnets? just make the same type of workflow and leave the field blank and uncheck "Append..." it will delete anything in the commnets field.

Of course things get a little complicated if you want to be able to clear just certain things out of the commnets field.

[cla]

Never seen this before:

Change the alert volume:
Option-drag the sound volume slider in the menu bar

Koohl!

Anyway, this is a Spotlight thread: it surprises me that I can't create a smart folder from a Spotlight-search, especially when the Finder method of defining a smart folder strongly resembles the concept of Spotlight-search.

Or am I missing something?

Nevertheless, impression so far: Tiger finally took Mac OS X to status of state of the art.
I'm impressed. Really impressed - and that's a lot coming from a Mac OS 9 fan of spatialness...

[Simon]

Can you also use something like
microsoft parent:preferences
to find all MS preference files in /Library/Preferences or ~/Library/Preferences ?

[Chuckit]

Not only does the search "microsoft parent:preferences" not turn up only Microsoft preference files, its results seem completely arbitrary.

/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.4.0.sdk/usr/include/wx-2.5/wx/defs.h
/Users/chuck/Downloads/eclipse/readme/readme_eclipse.html
/Users/chuck/Downloads/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.pde.build_3.0.1/feature/rootfiles/readme/readme_eclipse.html
/Users/chuck/Marathon Infinity/MML.html
/Applications/Adobe InDesign CS/InDesign CS ReadMe.pdf
/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS/Scripting Guide/JavaScript Reference Guide.pdf
/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS/Scripting Guide/Photoshop Scripting Guide.pdf
/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS/Scripting Guide/VisualBasic Reference Guide.pdf
/Applications (Mac OS 9)/QuarkXPress 5.0/Documents/ReadMe.pdf
/Applications (Mac OS 9)/QuarkXPress 5.0/Tech Support/Troubleshooting Guide.pdf
/Applications (Mac OS 9)/QuarkXPress 5.0/Documents/Guides to QuarkXPress/Interface Overview.pdf
/Applications (Mac OS 9)/QuarkXPress 5.0/Documents/Guides to QuarkXPress/Using QuarkXPress.pdf
/Applications (Mac OS 9)/QuarkXPress 5.0/Documents/avenue.quark Documentation/Guide to avenue.quark.pdf
/Users/chuck/ChuckExtended/old chuck/Learning C/Programming/Introduction to MPW/Introduction to MPW

Huh?

[d.fine]

Maybe the word Microsift is in those files somewhere, and that is why they are displayed as results of the search... maybe you have to change the search parameters to find those preferences.

[Goldfinger]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Not only does the search "microsoft parentreferences" not turn up only Microsoft preference files, its results seem completely arbitrary.

Huh?

Those results probably all contain "parent" or "preferences".

[JLL]

Originally Posted by cla

Never seen this before:


Koohl!

Also possible in Panther.

[Simon]

OK, so basically 'parent:' can not be used as a search key?

note to brain: write feature request to http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback

[Anand]

I am personally starting to really hate spotlight. It finds only some things. I have a file called iBook.txt. I do a spotlight search for iBook and I get just some random junk. Than I manually locate the file, while keeping the spotlight window open, now I redo the search and the file is now found!

Pisses the hell out of me!

Spotlight has been terrible. I have so many things like this. Is there anyway to re-index the entire drive?

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally Posted by Chris Grande

A lot of people want a easy way to add metadata to files, well I kind of developed a easy enough way. Using the new "Spotlight Commnets" field (its just the normal coments field with a new blue UI). Of course trying to type in the same thing in; for example if you wanted to mark 50 files urgent would be crazy - enter Automater and its "add spotlight comment" action. Just create a Workflow using just that action and enter your term "Urgent" and have the "Append to coments" box checked. Then save it out as a app, put it in the dock in the finder sidebar or toolbar and just drag and drop your files onto it, and there you go. Want a quick way to erase those commnets? just make the same type of workflow and leave the field blank and uncheck "Append..." it will delete anything in the commnets field.

Of course things get a little complicated if you want to be able to clear just certain things out of the commnets field.

I'm guessing Leopard will finally give Spotlight it's due respect.

An revamp of the Open/Save is probably coming. An Open dialog that makes use of intelligent and often used filters to find the file you need quickly would be great. A Save dialog that would at the bare minimum allow one or two user-controlled tags ('Project Name' to group files by project or 'Keyword' or Spotlight comment) as well as other app-specific tags (up to the developer of said app to decide what other tags should be user-controlled).

The Finder also needs to either shape up or be replaced by some super-charged Spotlight window that would allow you to group or find any file really fast.

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by Anand

I am personally starting to really hate spotlight. It finds only some things. I have a file called iBook.txt. I do a spotlight search for iBook and I get just some random junk. Than I manually locate the file, while keeping the spotlight window open, now I redo the search and the file is now found!

Pisses the hell out of me!

Spotlight has been terrible. I have so many things like this. Is there anyway to re-index the entire drive?

Yeah. See my message about it, in this very thread.

Geez, talk about blind.

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by Weyland-Yutani

Spanish 'clase:im�genes'

etc�tera

liked this one: 'clase:mensajes de correo'

[angelmb]

another one, add a prefix to do a better search:

u2 kind:audio

[tomrock]

To force Spotlight to re-index your drive, first drag the drive to the privacy box in System Preferences which will delete the index and then remove the drive from privacy. If you open the Spotlight box (with Cmd + spacebar) you'll see "indexing".