Finder search question

Hello,
In vista, I copied emails from MSmail to a directory for backup and put it on a pen drive.
I can search this directory for a keyword and it displays all the relevant emails/files with that keyword found in the contents of each emails/file.I can also show 'Date Sent' and 'Has attachments' for each emails/file.
Can I do this in finder/leopard and if so how?
Kind Regards
mcnalpat

I'd just use:
[Link to EasyFind download|http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11076/easyfind]
or
[FindAnyFile|http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile> - "This is a free program for Mac OS 10.4 and later that lets you search for files on your disks, primarily on HFS formatted ones." Read the [FAF FAQ|http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/#faq] for information about fast searching capability.
PS - Can I force Spotlight to examine a specific folder manually?
[10.4: Force Spotlight to reindex a drive |http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050424201429961] - read for comment on how to do folders

Similar Messages

Finder search not the same as Spotlight

When I use Spotlight, my word files (.doc) files show up
under the "Documents" group. But when I do the same search in Finder, the
word files show up under "Other," and the only file that shows up in
the "Documents" is a txt file.
This is a new computer and I only have two doc files, but I would think that word documents would be categorized as a "Document" group.

Hi, jmoon —
Please accept a warm welcome to Apple Discussions!
As far as I know, what you're calling a "Finder search" (⌘-F) is a Spotlight tool ——> essentially, a more fine-tuned" version. So please forgive if I'm "answering" the "wrong question" below —
Are you using the (⌘-F) »» "other" (= "select a search attribute") »» "Creator" (= "Application used to create the document") &/or »» "Name extension" setting?
I'm by no means "expert" in the peccadilloes of Spotlight or (⌘-F) — so I did a quick < ">Spotlight forum in an effort to help.
Rather than regurgitate, I'll link a few threads that seem promising:
(1) odysseus's thread, "Spotlight won't index Word files w/o .doc extension-solved!" In it, he references a MacNN thread on the topic.
(2) A discussion in Michael Hesson's thread, "Can't find .doc docs?" — where eventually using a smart folder seemed to help...
(3) Laurie Leonard's thread, "Changing extensions so Spotlight works better." Francine Schwieder links to a helpful AppleScript for making batch-name-changes... Unfortunately, this approach apparently worked only for 1994 – 1998 Word files. (Duh?)
Btw, if you don't mind —I'm curious about a couple of things. When you "Get Info" on one of your ".doc" files, is "Name & Extension" »» "Hide extension" selected? Also, does toggling "Document" — or dragging to modify its order — in the System Preferences »» Spotlight »»Search Results make any difference?
Does this help?
Looking forward to hearing back from you!
Regards,
Dean
I edited this message...
[1,965 ⊥ 3,355]

Why the Finder Search-Function is corrupted in Mavericks so that I cannot open any file after searching it?

Finder Search-Function is troubled / corrupted / misfunctioning
When keying in a search word the files are selected properly, yet not shown with details. Furthermore you cannot click and open any file. Also sorting is not possible.
Anyone else has such a problem and has figured out on how to resolve it?
(Spotlight works properly and is somehow a spare solution).
There seem to be many basic problems with the finder in Mavericks, this problem unfortunately has not been resolved also with the last software-release 10.9.2.
The quality strategy of Apple has to be questioned: I do not need 200 NEW functions, but I need the previous basic functions STILL working!
Thank you!

As a cross-reference:
Eric Root
Re: Hi! I have a problem with finder
01.03.2014 12:14 (in response to Fexei)
Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist. Move the .plist to your desktop.
Re-launch Finder by logging out/in and test. If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop.
If the same, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer ones.
Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.
You might need to redo the View settings after an update.
Resolved the Problem! Thanks to Eric and Leonie
Felix

Finder Search -- complex search in a particular folder

This is embarrassing!
I want to use Finder
     File-->Find
to do complex searches (e.g. using "Kind", "Created Date", "Contents", etc.) on a specific folder. I want to use the Finder "Find" GUI, not the Spotlight "command line".
I think I need to discover how to add additional places, folders, to the search location header of the Finder Search window, which now contains (by default?)
     Search:   This Mac    "My HD"
In other words, if my target folder is called "Fum" I think I need to see
     Search:   This Mac    "My HD"   "Fum"
Then I need to select the right-most item to tell the Finder Search "just search the folder named 'Fum'". After that, I enter the search parameters.
But I cannot figure out how to do this.    I tried drag-and-dropping folder "Fum" on this line. I tried Command-F with "Fum" selected. I tried enabling the left tool-bar, getting "Fum" in the list, then highlighting "Fum".
D'oh!   It's such a stupid question that ... the obvious web searches are useless.
So... how is this done?
I feel like I'm totally missing some basic assumpation of the current 10.7 Finder search metaphor. Please feel free to fill me in.   (Why isn't there a "+" button at the far right of the Search locations header, instead of what I see now, only a "Save" and a "-" button? That would seem the logical way to add locations to search.)
TIA

Whew, sorry...
[A tedious description of various experiments, failing attempts to sort this problem omitted here.]
I note that Finder Preferences ---> Advanced offers 3 choices for searches, schematically:
     When performing a search:
      (1) Search This Mac
      (2) Search the Current Folder
      (3) Use the Previous Search Scope
[Another tedious description of more experiments omitted here.]
Just a moment... Selecting alternative (3) does the trick for me!   I can now restrict the search directory to "Fum". I just need to:
a) Choose Finder search preference (3), which to my mind implements "Search the Current Folder" and NOT "Use the Previous Search Scope".
b) Interpret "Current Folder" as the folder open and at front.
Life is now good!   <heavy sigh>

HT1491 I created my account im my iphone, and now I´m trying to buy with my ipad and the site make questions....so I want to know where do I can find this questions in the site...

I created my account im my iphone, and now I´m trying to buy with my ipad and the site make questions....so I want to know where do I can find this questions in the site...

I am very happy to report that my server connection tech, which I called via landline, informed me to : 1. Open Tools 2. Scan down to Clear Recent History 3. Delete All. That was it! Unbelievable! Six hours of searching through the Windows catagories. I checked the results on an internet site, and viola! It was gone! Mozilla Firefox seems to remember the usernames and passwords irregardless of the option window that asks if you if want it to remember the user and password. I finally got in touch with my friend and he said he did not answer yes to the window, even though he was aware of it. No damage. I surely do appreciate everyones' concern in this, now what seems to be, a very simple solution. Cudos to Firefox! Thank-you! P.S. I now have to enter my information at the beginning of any password protected sites...no harm done! My friend is now condemned to the 'user account' site! lol...

Mail find/search not working

I have found that Mail has gone a bit bonkers. First I lost a bunch of important emails when moving the messages to a different mailbox (they are simply gone). Now the find/search function is completely erratic. The same search terms will sometimes turn up messages, sometimes nothing.
I have deleted the preferences, rebuilt the mailboxes multiple times, even deleted the envelope file so mail would rebuild the entire index from scratch. Also I've repaired permissions. The search function is simply erratic still.
I even had an issue after deleting the preference files where the custom tool bar would revert back to the default one when starting up Mail again... a reboot (and perhaps running various scripts through Onyx seemed to have nipped that one in the bud).
What is going on here? Anyone else havinfg these issues? How to fix it?
I am running Mavericks, OS X 10.9.1

... no fix for this problem?

Finder search bug? No results if 'Search' field is blank.

I can't determine if this is a bug or is simply a change in Finder search behavior (for the worse, IMO) in 10.8.
In the Finder, when I select 'File>>Find' (or hit ⌘-F) and then select the current folder from the top of the search parameters, no files appear in the search results if the 'Search' (for filename) field at the top of the window is blank even though the only other search parameter is 'Kind is Any'.
If I enter text in the 'Search' field, matching results start to appear.
In 10.7, I saw different behavior. In the absence of text in the Search field, the Finder would simply return results matching the other parameters and ignore the Search field.
With the new behavior, there doesn't seem to be any way to construct a saved search based solely on other parameters (kind, date, file label, etc) without specifying some filename parameter as well. Of course, I can work around the problem by using something like 'NOT xxx!@#$%' in the Search field, but this approach is klugy at best.
Anyone else see this? Bug? Deliberate change in Finder behavior?

Yes the report ESH_TEST_SEARCH returns no material.
So should I suspend the indexing and reschedule with with real time indexing ? I am not sure whether we choose real time indexing in the first time.
What about the authorizations, I see USER_AUTHORITY object is activealready.
Thanks

My hard drive icon is gone from desk top and does not show up in spotlight or finder searches!

Hi there
recently my hard drive icon has disappeared from my Macbook Pro (10.7.4) desk top and does not show up in spotlight or finder searches! I have tried several fixes posted online for earlier operating systems with no luck.
Also, when I connect my external hard drive the icon does not appear on the desl top nor in the finder either, making looking for documents impossible.
Help!!!
Thanks in advance!
Marni

In "finder" click "finder" then "preferences" and navigate to the "general" tab.
Select which items you would like to have show on your desktop.

I want to exclude Mail messages from showing up in Finder search on OSX Mavericks.

I went to the SysPrefs > Spotlight > Search Results tab and uncheck Mail but all my email messages still show up in finder searches. How do I exclude finder from searching mail?

Thank you very much, this works! I didn't know about that feature, so your help was really vital!

Where to find search history files for firefox

where to find search history files for firefox, I accidently deleted them. Have Time Capsule, but do not know where to look. Can't find anything but a folder called Mozilla. Thanks - Alan

Thanks. Guess i will have to download the driver package from Nvidia and extract the headers from that.

Unhidden files are not revealed in Finder search

When I use the Finder "Search" window, my Library folder, System folder and folders therein are not revealed, even though I can manually locate them though the Finder's tree. As far as I can tell, these files are not hidden and do not have special security settings. They do not show up in Spotlight either. What in the world is going on? I never had these problems with older versions of OS X.
Thanks to anyone who can assist!

Spotlight doesn't normally show files from those folders because those folders do not contain files that should normally be accessed directly. Rather than clutter the search results, system files are suppressed unless you specifically ask for them. Do that by including a criterion in your search to 'include system files'. You might have to add that option to the search criterion pop-up by choosing "Other...". Check "System Files" and then choose "Include".

"File, Find, Searching "This Mac" or "New Finder Window" not finding files ?

I an iMac 7,1, Mac OS X 10.6.8, Build 10K549,
I have noticed on many occasions recently that when I ma using either ...
File, Find, Searching "This Mac"
or
"New Finder Window"
I am NOT finding the files I am looking for ...
I now they are there, so I go through all my folders, and find the files, or folders I am looking for ...
So why could this be happening, why are they not found in the search ?
Is there a fix or addition ?

As baltwo eventually explained, you have to add the search criteria "System files" to your search, with the option "Include" selected, to find many items Spotlight otherwise excludes from search results. Alternately (& quite ridiculously), if your search is restricted to the parent folder containing the item, you don't need to add this.
For example, if you open /Library in the Finder, enter "Desktop Pictures" in the search box, you won't get it in the results with the default "This Mac" location, but if you click "Library" for the location, you will. (Yes, many users think this is bizarre, "what were they thinking?" behavior.)
What Spotlight considers "system files" is only slightly less bizarre, as you will probably discover once you start using it to broaden searches. For instance, Safari history items & Mail.app messages are not found unless you include system files, but many files like C Header Source files (in System/Library/Frameworks) are found without including system files in the search.
When it was introduced in Tiger, Spotlight was supposed to be a next-generation search engine, capable of accurately guessing what you were looking for (& filtering out what you weren't) with near-sentient intelligence. I think almost anyone who used that version will agree it did not achieve that lofty goal. Apple apparently agreed, or at least listened to the complaints enough to realize it needed rethinking. Unfortunately, what its designers came up with for the Leopard rethink feels like an early beta version, full of hastily implemented, quirky features that never got sorted out before it was released.
We can only hope that we won't have to wait for OS 10.6 for a more mature, less quirky version.

Finder Search in Mountain Lion -- broken?

Since upgrading to Mountain Lion yesterday, my Finder Search does not operate the way it used to and I'm not getting the right results anymore. I have already forced Spotlight to reindex by adding the entire drive and a disk image file to Privacy, and then removing them from Privacy. Reindexing took about 45 minutes, but now it says it is done reindexing. I have these same two issues both before and after the reindex.
If I have Finder displaying the files in the disk image and type a few letters for a filename (e.g., name matches great) in the search box, Finder Search cannot find the files in the disk image even though I can plainly see they are there.
I have Finder pointing to the entire main drive. I search for name matches quiz. I get 10 results, including 3 in the RE Class folder, plus seven others. But, if I point Finder to the RE Class folder on the main drive, and do the same search, it shows me those three files (as it should), and if I click the button above the search results for "This Mac" to expand the search, it displays only those same three in the RE Class folder, and "Searching This Mac..." appears with a spinner at the bottom of Finder ... forever? About 20 minutes so far... (This used to be instantaneous.) It cannot find all the other matching files it previously showed me are in multiple locations on the main drive.
Can someone tell me how to fix this? Thank you.

Based upon my test results below, Apple Support has escalated this to the engineers for resolution. It appears that the presence of any mounted DMG file is what precipitates the problem, and the problem goes away if I close the DMG, but I can't really search in my DMG files until this gets fixed.
<quoting my test results:>
I have done more testing this morning.
I had always worked with the Finder Preference > Advanced > When performing a search = Search the Current Folder. I changed this back to Search This Mac before conducting the following tests.
My conclusion is that the presence of any open DMG is causing the problem. Other connected drives (external) don't have any bearing; they work fine.
Test 1, with no DMG open:
Pointing to the David home folder.
Search Name=Dad
          This Mac=58
          Davidn=23
          This Mac=58
          David=23
This is as expected. The counts include files from an external hard drive, together with the internal drive.
Test 2, with a DMG (Personal) open:
Pointing to the David home folder.
Search Name=Dad
          This Mac=45 (Note that this number is lower than in test 1, and it should be higher by 3 because of the files in the DMG. Expected count was 61.)
          David=23
          This Mac = <spinner> (Expected 61)
          <cancel>
Test 3, with the DMG still open:
Search Name=Dad
          This Mac = 0 (Expected 61)
          David = 23
          This Mac = <spinner> (Expected 61)
          <cancel>
At this point, I closed the DMG.
Test 4, with no DMG open:
Search Name=Dad          This Mac=58
          David=23
          This Mac=58
          David=23
This is as expected. The counts include files from an external hard drive, together with the internal drive.
In addition, the tests I conducted yesterday, where I was directly searching in the DMG, remain the same: The first time the result is correct, and after that I only get beach balls.
Note that the DMG used for this test (Personal) is only 1 MB in size, and contains only 12 items in the root -- not a lot of searching to do. I have tried to force Spotlight to reindex this file by moving it into and out of Privacy. I never notice Spotlight do anything about that, but maybe it is too small to be noticeable.

Does the 10.5.7 update address command+f finder search issues?

Does the 10.5.7 update address command+f finder search issues?
Search has been horrible under 10.5 in that it does not reliably find FOLDERS on network drives, only file names.
Even when I am looking directly at a folder and I search for it will not appear in the command+f window.
Also the stupidity of not allowing a specific search location.
Has this been addressed? I have, at any given time, 3-4 mounted servers.
I do not have a choice now to search a specific hard drive.
10.4.11 gave me the option under "OTHERS" to select a specific place to search.
The only choice I have in 10.5.2 is "SHARED". Which searches all drives when I only want to search one. Nor do I have a choice of searching just one of my two internal drives.
I talked with Chris in apple engineering several months ago, who acknowledged that search problems are a known issue under 10.5 and this was being addressed but have not heard any more. I don't want to download an update unless these broken search issues have been fixed. This is a production machine and I cannot have downtime in the Dept.

Have you filed a bug report or enhancement request with Apple?
http://bugreport.apple.com/

I cannot find my question from last night. I saw the instruction from jscher2000 but I find nothing like what he decribes.

I cannot find my question from last night. I saw the instruction from jscher2000 but I find nothing like what he decribes. My question was "Firefox 22 worked on Windows 7 but 23 does not"

hello MLP99, you can find your prior questions & answers under this link (once you're logged into support.mozilla.org with your account): https://support.mozilla.org/questions?filter=my-contributions

Finder search question

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for