[Kate]

Originally Posted by wulf

You can add folders which aren't usually indexed (such as /System) using Spotlight Indexer.

That's a good one, I'll try that next time.

As for the images...my memory serves me well usually when I remember that I had a photo where some people gathered around a table. Actually some of that kind. But they may be sorted in under the persons name, or more likely under a project name. I'll never remember project names and my memory fails with names too often. Spotlight or any other tool alike doesn't do this trick. It cannot view a picture and filter it according to content.
Since my picture archive has now some 60,000 items, I can forget going through these and add comments....

[Randman]

You could do a time search for a certain period, if you remember that.

[segaslave]

is there anything to remove the spotlight icon from the menu bar? i hate it up there i always some how manage to click on it.

[wulf]

Originally Posted by segaslave

is there anything to remove the spotlight icon from the menu bar? i hate it up there i always some how manage to click on it.

This page on MacOSXhints explains how to get rid of the Spotlight icon, though doing this will also turn off the Spotlight menu.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by segaslave

is there anything to remove the spotlight icon from the menu bar? i hate it up there i always some how manage to click on it.

How do you accidentally click on the very top right corner of your screen where there isn't ever anything but the spotlight menu?

[segaslave]

Originally Posted by nonhuman

How do you accidentally click on the very top right corner of your screen where there isn't ever anything but the spotlight menu?

with safari open i always try to click the desktop behind the upper left part of the windo. just a habbit from way back. or sometimes going for the google search ill get the spotlight.

[nonhuman]

Originally Posted by segaslave

with safari open i always try to click the desktop behind the upper left part of the windo. just a habbit from way back. or sometimes going for the google search ill get the spotlight.

Ah. Makes sense.

[segaslave]

Originally Posted by nonhuman

Ah. Makes sense.

well i ment upper right corner so it should make even more sense now
just because the window corners are rounded so i can keep the window on the very edge of the screen but still have a small area to click through to the finder....

[Jasoco]

Old habits are hard to break. You get so used to something being somewhere and when it's not, you get disoriented. I realized this again while playing with Ubuntu this week. I kept going for the close button on the top left. But all I got was a menu that doesn't close when clicked. Or double-clicked for that matter. (Like Windows does.) Instead you have to manually select Close. Oh well, that's why I'm a Mac man.

[rlmorel]

Originally Posted by gooffer

Yes I have to agree with one of the first posters the problem with spotlight is that it finds stuff really fast but then when you want to know where it is located you end up having to use find anyway ......

hint hint hint apple a fix is needed like right button click show location ?

Well yes that would be way too advanced well leave that one for longhorn.

Spotlight is GREAT! (And...it WILL get better!) Apple has a great Spotlight "Tutorial" to show you how to use it-you might need to be a .mac member though.

For example, if you type "smithsonian kind:images" in the spotlight field, it will only show you images with the word "smithsonian" in the filename. If you just hit the RETURN key, then a separate window will open up with only those images in it.

If you click on the "Play" triangle that points to the right at the top bar which is blue, all the images will be loaded into a slide show, which you can watch.

Or, once the slideshow starts, just move your mouse to see the toolbar appear in the bottom third of the screen and select the "INDEX SHEET" option, and you see a "contact sheet" of all the images. THIS IS VERY POWERFUL, if you have a lot of images like I do.

One of the keys, I have found, is to use the SHOW ALL (number of items) menu item found at the top of the spotlight choices...

Or, if you are looking for a document, you can OPTION-Click or right click if you have your mouse set up that way and select REVEAL IN FINDER to see the actual file. Or you can double click on the file to open it.

I fault Apple for not doing enough to educate their user base on the power of this functionality. If you are a .mac member, they have nice Quicktime tutorials, but I don't think it is enough.

[Anand]

I have started to hate spotlight. You can't sort stuff easily by date and the "find" window can be different based upon how you get to it. Stupid. I miss the old way of searching.

I have a file called "coverletter". Typing cover does not bring it up. Why?

[osxrules]

I don't use it much. I like the speed when I do but thanks to file indexing, it often churns out more results than I need and so makes things harder to find.

I find I have to use the Finder based search instead of the text field more.

I also don't like that I have to put external drives in private to stop mds hanging up my system but I can always search the old way using Finder search.

Mostly I keep my system setup fairly well and tidy out regularly so I don't need to look for anything.

[Darthmaul4114]

i use it all the time. if you know the file name, its a lot quicker to get there than to go through all your directories to find it

[NateEssex]

When you write a lot of papers and you don't want to skim through them to find various references, Spotlight rocks. It's also great when looking for names of people in emails and documents

[VLich]

Put me down as another spotlight hater. Nine out of ten times I'm simply looking for a file who's name I know at least part of. Spotlight misses files that match*, it's slower than the old search by name, and the interface is much much worse. Maybe 4 years from now Apple will get all the bugs worked out and put a good interface on it. For now, I'd rather have the search from Panther.

*This is probably the worse part. Searching spotlight feels like searching google. I get a bunch of results that are close to what I want, but there's a hit out there that I know exists but doesn't come up in my search.

[leperkuhn]

Searches take forever. i don't like how it starts searching as soon as you start typing, i'd rather hit return to start it, since the finder completely locks up the text input area if you pause. Bah.

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by VLich

Put me down as another spotlight hater. Nine out of ten times I'm simply looking for a file who's name I know at least part of. Spotlight misses files that match*, it's slower than the old search by name, and the interface is much much worse. Maybe 4 years from now Apple will get all the bugs worked out and put a good interface on it. For now, I'd rather have the search from Panther....

old style "search by name..." etc is still there. read this thread