How 2 Search files in MAC

Question

hi,
im a new user in Mac OS. i have a question on how to search By file types in MAC Os.
in Windows you can do a "ind File" by *.mp3....this will search & list all the .mp3 in the HD.
How can i can like this in OSX.
thnx

Answer 1

Hi, F. C.
There are a couple of approaches to this using Find. Find is implemented in Spotlight but permits more precise search criteria to be specified than using the Spotlight icon.
A. Use Find to search for the extension .mp3:1. In Finder, press the Command-F keyboard shortcut to launch Find.
2. In the top "slice" of the Find window, select the search location, e.g. Computer or Home.
3. Click the Kind pop-up button and select Other...
4. Select Name Extension from the list. If you regularly want to use this as a search criterion, also select the Add to Favorites checkbox.
5. Click OK. Note that the Kind criteria selected in step 3 now shows Name Extension as the criteria.
6. Type mp3 in the text input field next to Name Extension.
Spotlight will return all files whose extension matches mp3. Using the Name Extension criteria is the most precise approach to finding files by their extensions.B. Use Find to search for music files containing mp3:1. In Finder, press the Command-F keyboard shortcut to launch Find.
2. In the top "slice" of the Find window, select the search location, e.g. Computer or Home.
3. Click the Kind pop-up button and select Music.
4. In the Search For field, type mp3.
Spotlight will return all music files that in some way match the search term mp3. This is perhaps the fastest approach, but can be a less precise since it could return some files that contain the character string "mp3" in their name or other metadata attributes but have a different actual extensions, e.g. a file named "MP3 Rocks.aiff".Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X