Finding file with Spotlight

How do I find a file with Spotlight? Or, more to the point, why does Spotlight make it soooo hard to find the location of files?
Example: I want to find file "foo.xls". I type in "foo.xls" into Spotlight and sure enough, there it is! Great! Er .. but wait. All Spotlight lets me do is OPEN the file. I don't want to do that, I just want to know where it is; what folder it is in.
How do I do that? I can't right-click on items in the Spotlight result list (why not? isn't this what most users would do?). I can't press spacebar for quicklook. I can't seem to do ANYTHING with Spotlight EXCEPT open the file.
I presume there is some hidden shortcut key involving some obscure combination of option+command etc etc, but how am I supposed to know that? Isn't this supposed to be easy?
This is, to say the least, very frustrating.
--Tim

In 10.6 and prior, the user would need only hover over the item in Spotlight's results and a yellow flag would appear with the location. In 10.7, a new Spotlight feature emerged, the preview, so the yellow flag is gone.
Use Finder's Spotlight instead in the upper right of the Finder window. You can always use Finder's "Show Path Bar" view, so that, after doing a Finder Spotlight search, you can single click on a file and see the path listed at the bottom of the window.

Similar Messages

Spotlight does not find files with "_" (underscores), but only for certain file types

Hey Folks,
this is strange, maybe someone has an idea.
I already searched the internet for a while, nothing found so far.
I have a file "calc_mean.m" on my desktop.
When I type "calc" in spotlight, it shows the file.
But when I type "calc_" it suddenly does not show the file anymore. Nor does find the file, when I enter "calc_mean.m" in spotlight.
When I enter "calc mean.m" in spotlight, it finds it (using space instead of the underscore).
Now comes the real surprise:
When I rename the file to "calc_mean.txt", spotlight suddenly DOES find the file when entering "calc_mean.txt".
I recreated this "feature" with other files, copying and renaming ".txt" files to ".m" files, and if there's a underscore in the file, spotlight wont find it.
Playing around a bit more, it seems spotlight does find files with underscore when they are documents, at least it works for the following extensions:
.pdf
.doc
.txt
.xls
But these extensions for example do not work:
.mp3
.m
.k
.a
.ka
(and other random endings I tried).
I am pretty confused. Sure it's no big deal learning to search for files that include underscores in their name using space instead. But I'm still quite puzzled. Any idea?

All of those have meaning in various database search syntax (not sure if it matters).
_ usually means any character.
% usually means any run of characters.
- is often used to negate what comes next, i.e. "don't include results that have the following text."
I don't see any problem on my Mac, though.
I also don't have any problem finding file names with those accented characters using Spotlight. I would suggest reindexing Spotlight, but if cmd-f finds them, I'm not sure that would help.
Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes

Spotlight fails to find files with search items

I just did a Spotlight search on
Japanese English は
Spotlight found more than 3500 items, but the two sample Word files I looked at didn't have は in them.
This is really frustrating. Is there a way to ensure Spotlight only finds files with the input?

Spotlight is notorious for its weaknesses and erratic behavior. You might try reindexing your Spotlight. Open up Spotlight in Sys Prefs, go to Privacy and drag the HD Folder there. Leave it a minute then remove it by clicking on the minus at the bottom. This will force Spotlight to reindex the drive, which may take some time.
I mostly use EasyFind (free) instead of Spotlight.
http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/freeware/

Find File and Spotlight not working....

Hi all,
Today, I used the find file command to search for survey I needed to print out. I searched for "survey" and nothing was found. I did the same thing in spotlight with the same results. I then searched through folders (the horror) and found the file I was looking for. After opening the file, both "find" and spotlight were able to find the document. A couple of hours ago, I did a search for "memo" - I've got many documents with the word memo in it - both find file and spotlight came up with no results. I did a quick search in the spotlight topic and someone suggested using Yasu to run all of the maintenances - same results. Does anyone know how to reset the index file, or whatever file OS X uses? I'm currently running OS 10.4.5.
Bryan

692/3138
Hi Bryan,
Even after so many threads, ideas and turnarounds found on these very Forums by Francine Schwieder and many other geniuses, discussing its doubtful behaviours and trying to make it work better,
personally I don't think I can trust it anymore, rely on it to find something and to positively conclude it's not here if it doesn't find it.
Even if one day I see it finds invisible files at last.
That's why I use EasyFind.
EasyFind always finds everything, just like Panther's Find (⌘F) feature used to, because it uses the same kind of indexing.
Your problem looks like you just didn't give it enough time to index, but anyway, can you rely on it anymore after that?
On my computer, EasyFind has always been stable, problem-free, and unfortunately a little slow.
Enjoy (the other good aspects of) Tiger!
Axl

Script to find files with same names with in a folder and it sub folders.

Looking for script to find files with same names with in a folder and it sub folders.

Are you just looking to find if any two files underneath a folder have the same name?
If you just want to know that a file named "whatever" exists in two folders, that's not too difficult, but you probably want to know the full path names.
Here's one attempt:
$ perl -MFile::Find -le 'find(\&w, "."); while (($n,$p)=each %file) {if(@{$p}>1){print join(" ",@{$p})}} sub w{push @{$file{$_}},$File::Find::name;}'That will print the pathnames on the same line of any files with the same name that appear anywhere underneath your current directory.
It's a bit long for a "one-liner", but functional.
Darren

Search inside Coldfusion files with Spotlight?

I've recently found to my dismay that you cannot search inside .cfm files with Spotlight, and there appears to be no easy way to tell Spotlight to start looking in those files. I would assume that since they're just text files, and Spotlight does seem to search inside .htm files, that it shouldn't be too difficult to get Spotlight to do this, but I'm at a loss as to going about it.
Can anybody point me in the right direction?
Thanks.

For Spotlight to index content there has to be an mdimporter for that content type. If the files are in fact plain text, it is possible to do a bit of hacking to get them indexed, see this discussion at MacOSXHints:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050514182520714&query=mdimport
Be sure to read the comments! And don't do it without a current clone of your system on an external drive that is NOT attached when you try this out (if you do try it).
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Locating a Text File with spotlight??

With recent Updates of OS X, Spotlight simply finds the File but no way to tell where it is. Have tried everything I can think of; but, so far, the only way I have found is to Duplicate and then Move that to the Desktop fromwhich I can then place it where I want it.
the loss of the Save as availability after the initial Save is irksome..
I have little faith in the apple seeds who make these changes, but .. this seems pretty far out and surely others have the problem, too.
appreciate,
Ed

Hold down command and click the file in Spotlight's list.
You can view where it is by holding down cmd+opt while hovering over it.
Also, if you have it open, cmd-click or right-click on the title and it will drop down the path to the file.
To get to Save As, hold down the option key, or export, or duplicate.

Viewing comments by default; finding files with comments

I searched the various preferences but did not see this: Is there a way to tell Acrobat to open files with the comments list showing?
Also, I have a folder of PDFs that have been indexed with catalog. Only a few of the files have comments. Is there any way to construct a search for "any PDF with a comment"? What I've been doing is using the user ID that Acrobat automatically places in edits, but that won't help for long, as the number of people doing comments will increase, and some future documents will have those IDs in regular text.

LarryHN:
1) your suggestion will not work for the issue I'm describing: if I have both Raw and Jpeg files of the same image on my SD card, the iPad sort of lumps these together, so when I view the contents of my SD card it shows as one image/file, and if I select it and download it, it brings over both the Raw and Jpeg versions of the image, which is what I am trying to avoid and why I started the tread in the first place.
2) I spoke with sales people at two Apple stores and one person with their online sale, and none of them could addrss my issue. The online sales person said she might have to put me through to their tech people to resolve this or at least get the full, correct info. None of them were janitors.
I did find a workaround which I think will work:
Download the files over to my iPad, then use an app like Photo Manager Pro to be able to view the files by type, then select the Raw files and delete them from my iPad. This will work I hope, but seems like a lot of extra work for a device that's supposed to be user friendly--I think Apple missed the boat on this one, opting for making things 'simple' instead of functional for photographers.

Trying to write an Automator program to find files with same time created and change file names to matching source folder names

I am failrly green when it comes to automator.
I am trying to write an Automator program:
Not sure where to post this
trying to write an Automator program to find files and alter their names
I have a source folder with correct named master files in it.
eg. A0001_1234.mpeg
time created 14:02:03
date 07/07/2012
Another folder where there will be copies of the master files in a different format with different names but created at the same time as a file in the source directory.
they are created with a seperate device but they are
A0000001.mp4
time created 14:02:03
date 07/07/2012
I need it to then take the name from the source fies and apply the correct name to the matching file based on the time it was created.
I can't seem to find actions in automator that reference time crated.
Is this something I will be able to Do in automator?
Any help would be great
Thanks
R

Hi,
It's impossible to do this without any script in Automator.
Use this AppleScript script :
set source to choose folder with prompt "Select the source folder"
set anotherfolder to choose folder with prompt "Choose the another folder"
tell application "Finder"
    repeat with tfile in (get files of source)
        set cDate to creation date of tfile
        set findFiles to (files of anotherfolder whose creation date is cDate)
        if findFiles is not {} then
            set tName to name of tfile
            set name of item 1 of findFiles to tName
        end if
    end repeat
end tell

Find files with key words

trying to find files using key words is not working using bridge with cs3 and windowsxp.
when key words are attached to a file they are evident when the image is open. when i try to search for the file using the selected key word i get a no results found response.
any suggestions

Lots of posts on this subject in the Bridge forum. Check there, and if you still have problems post question.

Smart Folders to find files with certain priviledges

How do I set up a smart folder to display files that have only read&write privileges within a directory.

You mmight have better success using a standard Finder search. In the Finder press Command-F and then you can apply various filters to isolate files based on kind, name, dates created/modified, and a large number of additional metadata criteria.
If for some reason you can only find files that you have already modified (ie, by searching wiith modification date), then one way to reverse this for a search is to first find these files, then select them all and apply a Finder label to them (ie, "Red") and then perform the search on the same folders again but this time search for all items that are not labeled "Red" and your other items should show up.

Find File and Spotlight

behind the curve a little... really like OS 10.4.1 except one thing. I want the old find file back, where I can type in a file name and sort the exact matches by date. I don't want 500 htm files and 1000 other non-related files to appear, just the exact matches. I assume it a preference thing, but darned if I can figure it out... anyone?

692/3138
Hi Bryan,
Even after so many threads, ideas and turnarounds found on these very Forums by Francine Schwieder and many other geniuses, discussing its doubtful behaviours and trying to make it work better,
personally I don't think I can trust it anymore, rely on it to find something and to positively conclude it's not here if it doesn't find it.
Even if one day I see it finds invisible files at last.
That's why I use EasyFind.
EasyFind always finds everything, just like Panther's Find (⌘F) feature used to, because it uses the same kind of indexing.
Your problem looks like you just didn't give it enough time to index, but anyway, can you rely on it anymore after that?
On my computer, EasyFind has always been stable, problem-free, and unfortunately a little slow.
Enjoy (the other good aspects of) Tiger!
Axl

When I find a file with spotlight how can I find out where it is?

I need to know the directory path to it.
In case it matters I'm using Lion on an iMac.

Mac 101: Spotlight does't go into it, but as far back as I can remember Snow Leopard, Leopard and maybe even Tiger had a pop-up name and path feature.
Sorry for not getting back sooner, it took me a couple of tries to capture the pop-up because it kept re-hiding, plus I'm working on moving the desks and Macs in my office to make room for my new Mid 2010 Mac Mini.

How to find files with duplicate filenames

I am trying to find all the files I have on a particular HD that have the same file names. They probably aren't duplicate files but just have the same name.
Basically, my volume has 850 GB of RAW images. I have recently adopted a new name scheme in order to improve the organisation of the files. The new name is based on SFAYYMMDDXXXX (where SFA identifies it is my image. YYMMDD is the date it was created. XXXX is a 4 digit counter starting at 0001 for each day).
My slight concern comes from the fact that the images are in different folders. I used to store images according to the shoot type. So it may have been possible that some file names have been used more than once.
While this is not a massive problem at the moment, it kind of defeats one of the reasons that I changed the naming scheme... To have a unique name for every file.
What I would like to do is find a quick way of scanning the whole HD and identifying whether there are any files sharing the same file name even if they are in different folders.
Any ideas?

Yes snapper - download either FindFile at http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/10906315
or EasyFind at http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/8707
either of these will search your entire hard drive (which Spotlight won't unless you fiddle with it).
when they've finished their search, simply click the title of the "name" column and all the ones with the same name will be grouped.
You can then use the EasyFind or FindFile menu to locate the actual files, and decide what to do with them.

Finding file with tomorrow's date in file name

I have a workflow where pdf files are going through a process and they could end up in an error folder. The files all have the day's date embedded in their names. I would like to set up a cron job looking for files that have dropped in an error folder with tomorrow's date on them. Looking for today's date is trivial:
find . -name *_`date +%m%d`_*.pdf | grep "Error"
And I have a cron job that runs after midnight looking for files and it will send me an email. But most of the time the files have been in the Error directory for hours/days before -- how do I look for tomorrow-dated files the night before so that I can deal with them before I go to bed?
-- edited to add: I am running SL 10.6.8 I don't seem to have gnuDate which would let me do the --date="1 day" thingy -- or maybe it is there and I don't understand how to embed it in the find command...

Well, once again, a whole morning of diligent searching doesn't get the answer, but the minute I hit post on the question, I find it.
find . -name *_`date -v+1d +%m%d`_*.pdf | grep "Error"
Well, hope this helps somebody else!

Finding file with Spotlight

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