Smart Folder - Exclude Paths?

I am trying to create a "Smart Folder" similar to the existing "All Images" Smart Folder, except I would like to search my entire computer except for certain paths, such as, my applications folder and a few others.
I cant find a way to exclude paths from a search.
Can anyone help please?

It's very clunky, but I guess you could temporarily move the undesired folders into the Privacy pane of Spotlight Preferences, and then later remove them from the list if you wanted to include those locations in a different Spotlight search. Since the folders involved are small, re-indexing them should be every fast.
(Perhaps not the best candidate for an elegance prize… )

Similar Messages

Smart Folder search - Exclude sub folders?

When creating a Smart Folder is it possible to exclude sub folders of the folder you're searching, or a particular folder?

There is no way to reference a folder in Spotlight. That item cannot be used in a query.
kMDItemPath
Complete path to the file. This value of this attribute can be retrieved, but can't be used in a query or to sort search results.

Exclude *All* Subfolders From Smart Folder Search

I know how to make a Smart Folder search two different directories and retrieve results from each (e.g. /Applications and /Developer). I've also seen disscusions here on excluding particular subfolders, but to no avail. So here's a simpler request: is it possible to exclude all subfolders from a Smart Folder query? Suppose I have the following directory structure:
Foo/
A.txt
B.txt
Bar/
C.txt
D.txt
Baz/
E.txt
F.txt
G.txt
Given a search for *.txt files, I'd like the following result:
FooSearch.smartSearch
A.txt
B.txt
G.txt
Possible or no?

I have a similar issue, but want to exclude results that are within Mail.

Excluding items in a given folder from a Smart Folder Search

Hi: Looking for a tip here. I would like to exclude what pops up in a smart folder based on what folder it is. I do NOT want to exclude that folder from my general spotlight search ability, just in that smart folder.
Reason asking: I have a folder in docs that I use everyday, and backup (with a 3rd party utility) to my iDisk folder. This way I have backups on my home computer at virtually all times. (iDisk is good for backups, Dropbox for 'sharing') I have a smart folder that displays all the stuff that i've worked on in the last day. I've used a lot of 'not' tricks to exclude all but the file types I use, but I always get a double copy in that folder. The one in my working folder and the one on my iDisk. What would be perfect is to simply say exclude what is found at the iDisk location, but that doesn't seem to be an option in the search criteria. I could exclude the while iDisk from spotlight in general, but I still want to be able to find things when I type them on the standard search.
Any thoughts?

thanks, Michel. it had occurred to me to put a scratch tag on the folder, but I was hoping for an easier way. in future I'll do as you suggest though, because it's easier than what I have been doing.
daryl

Smart folder - different locations

Hello,
I'm just wondering, whether is possible (somehow) to create smart folder with 2 different locations of search.
For instance: I have Movies folder in my MBPro and also Movies folder in my external HDD (connected via USB or Airport extreme or Time Capsule as external HDD). I labeled all movies which I haven't seen yet with red color and all series with blue color.
Now I've created Smart folder which shows me every red labeled folders/files in Movies folder. But it is only Movies folder in my MBPro. But when I'm home and connected to external HDD (Time Capsule), I would love to see also the movies labeled with red (or blue in case of series) color in my smart folder.
I know I can create 2 smart folders, but it isn't so comfortable...
Message was edited by: jakudo

No, the search as you are describing it wouldn't work. Actually I was surprised that the search I tried the other day did work to exclude the contents of the sub-folder Computers in my Documents folder, trying to do that today doesn't work (I had thought maybe the "path" variable was being used in the raw query that is constructed by the search function, but I think the result I got before was just a happy accident). I'm afraid the only way to exclude the Downloads folder from a search of your home folder is to add it to the Privacy tab of the Spotlight pane in System Prefs.
So add the Downloads folder to Privacy, then navigate to your home folder, hit Command-F, leave the default criterion Kind is Any as is, click the + button and add "Last Modified date is after" and fill in the date. What you will get is a list of files and folders modified after the date you specify that are in any location in your home folder, except in the excluded folder. Your Downloads folder will no longer be searchable however.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

If i delete a file from a smart folder is it deleted from the hard drive?

I've got a late 2011 17" MacBook Pro with a 750 GB harddrive. I'm trying to free up space by deleting movie files. I spoke with tech support about this, and they suggested creating a smart folder of all my movie files in order to find them and delte them. I did this and deleted many files, but when I open system information to check on the amount of hard drive space, I'm still seeing the same amount of hard drive space dedicated to movies.
If I make a smart folder and delete files in that, am I really deleting them from my hard drive or just from the smart folder?

What files are stored automatically by Time Machine? I thought Time Machine pretty much saved everything on my hard drive to my external hard drive. If that is the case, wouldn't my music files and picture files be on Time Machine (via my external hard drive)?
Time Machine does backup almost all files on your hard drive, unless you have chosen to exclude them. There are a few exceptions, but nothing you should worry about. Your music and photos should be there, but Time Machine will not backup your iPhoto library if iPhoto is open.
Also, are the photos from iPhoto automatically stored on my external hard drive via Time Machine? If so, can I delete the pictures from iPhoto without deleting them from the external hard drive?
Yes to both questions, with the above cavat that Time Machine won't backup the library if iPhoto is open.
I notice that it takes iPhoto quite a while to load, and if deleting those photos would allow it to load quicker I would delete them (providing they would remain on the external hard drive.
I only have a few pictures in iPhoto, compared to my wife's 3,500+, and my iPhoto doesn't load appreciably faster that her's does even though I have a faster computer. In my opinion, it isn't worth the effort it would take to delete them for such a small gain.
You should have at least 2 complete backups to try to make sure you won't lose any data. Hard drives do fail and/or files can become corrupted. Time Machine can back up to more than one external hard drive or you can use a cloning program.
Time Machine FAQ

How to view and or delete smart folder in finder sidebar

Sounds easy, but I am having a problem. I recently had my hard drive replaced at the genius bar. I have a smart File on the finder side bar that I can not open or delete. When I click on the file I get the message "the volume for (name of file) cannot be found. I tried using both "spotlight" & "the finder go to" locate this smart folder to no avail. I cannot remember when I created this file but I had labeled it appleworks 6 manual.. I don't ever remember using this smart file, I may have just created it without ever putting anything in it. So how do I open it or just plain delete it. I can remove it from the side board but it just comes back. I also went to /volumes which took me to the hard drive, but when I looked at all the files I couldn't find a smart file with this label. Any suggestion? Thanks Paula

I made another smart folder. I wanted to see if I could get the options with the control key. My test folder worked fine and I was able to get the options. I could delete the test folder without any problems. If it is that I have an Appleworks manual stored in an image file, then how could I find the image file? And if I did find it, what would I do to it, so I could delete this smart folder that I set up? I did a spotlight search for image file, but I couldn't find anything. I also searched appleworks manual and I did find a "getting started with appleworks 6 document" with an path of '/application/appleworks (U.S. English) Applework 6 documentation ... when I click on it it opens in preview.. but that manual is stored in my appleworks in applications, so I don't think it is related to the smart folder in the finder sidebar. If I did manage to close or delete the image file that was related to this folder, does that mean I'm just stick with this smart folder that I can't delete on my finder sidebar?

Today smart folder showing old email attachments

Hi,
The "today" smart folder is very useful. But IMAP mail periodically decides to revisit every message it has ever seen, which apparently gives them all "today" tags according to the finder. So, just now my "today" folder contains 1,482 items (most of which I really have NOT worked on today!). These are all located in Library/Mail/IMAP...etc.
Is there a way to set a smart folder to exclude the Library directory? I know I can reserve it to search a single folder, but if I set it for the document folder, then it won't search the picture or applications folders. This folder must already exclude mail messages, since they don't appear; but attachments can be any kind of thing.
(Alternately, if there is some way to get IMAP to stop doing that.... It does not happen every day, but often enough to be annoying.)
thanks for any hints.
sarah

they are litterly old emails that i deleted months or even years ago... from different senders... but they are reappearing under a new sender/message.... thats really the only way i can describe it.. for example, this is just an example...
say 4 months ago i got an email from newegg and deleted it.... yesterday i got an email from my boss and when i opened it, it was the email i deleted 4 months ago from newegg... but when i go to my webmail it is the actual email from my boss...
another real example... i deleted an email from my preacher about 3 months ago and i receieved and email from my dad last week.. when i opened it, it was the old email from my preacher...
I hope that is a little clearer... these are all emails from mobile me.. i have all my mail FWDED to mobile me
Message was edited by: Devin Stephens
Message was edited by: Devin Stephens

Multiple source smart folder

Is it posible to have a smart folder/search that searches both a Local folder/This Mac and Shared computers?
Since we are on the subject is it possible to have it search multiple folders without selecting a common parent folder such as This Mac?

None that I know of. When I was looking at the Saved Search I wanted to use for searching both my startup drive and my Data drive I used Property List Editor and added the path to my Data drive in both the RawQueryDict->Search Scopes field and in SearchCriteria->FXCriteriaSlices->FXScopeArrayOfPaths, since I didn't know which one REALLY controlled things. I set it up to search by name matches "xyz" and keep it in the Sidebar. I can change the criteria when I bring it up by going to the Action toolbar icon, select "Show Search Criteria" then change to the name I want to search and make any other mods (such as Kind: Images, size, and so on). Works pretty good, actually, and is just as fast as the method in Tiger where you went to the Other place menulet and added something. Of course, there is still the aggravation of the column arrangement defaulting to "Last Opened" being selected.... Gad, what kind of a mind thought "Last Opened" would be anyone's first choice for any kind of search at all times? Or even EVER?
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Show File Size Column in Smart Folder

Any way to show the file size column in a smart folder? I'd like to be able to sort the search results by size.

That's pretty frustrating. I'd like to be able to view the Folder name in a Smart Folder but it doesn't seem like that's possible either. I just created a Smart Folder to show all my TGB projects. Unfortunately, I have 12 items all named project.t2dproj so I have to click each file and look at the path to know what it is. Not very helpful for my usage.

Smart folder with multiple keywords?

Is it possible to set up a smart folder to filter on more than one keyword assigned to an image? I'd like to set up a smart folder that will find images that have 2 specific keywords. I've searched, and wrestled with it every which way, but haven't landed on the solution.
For example:
Img_001 has keywords of "Animal" and "Vegetable"
Img_002 has keywords of "Animal", "Vegetable" and "Mineral"
Img_003 has keywords of "Animal" and "Mineral"
Img_004 has keywords of "Vegetable" and "Mineral"
I'd like my "Animal and Vegitable" smart folder to find Img_001, and Img_002 only.
Thanks for any ideas,
Guy

Guy,
Yes, you can do that. You would enter these criteria:
"Keyword is Animal." +
"Keyword is Vegetable."
When you enter the second condition, an additional menu appears above them. You need to set it to:
"Match all of the following conditions."
That will give you only photos which are tagged with both keywords.
FYI, you can do something similar with the keywords pane. In Preferences, Keywords, you can set iPhoto to filter based on any keyword or based on all keywords. With it set to match all keywords when filtering, clicking on your "Animal" and "Vegetable" keywords will give you only photos which contain both. The cool thing about this method is that you can Option-click a keyword to exclude it from the filter. So if you didn't want photos containing "Animal," "Vegetable," and "Protozoa," you could exclude "Protozoa" from the filter. Of course, this is done in real time, and doesn't create a self-updating Smart Album. But it's a fun trick for seeing what you have very quickly.
Regards

Spotlight excluding path

Hi,
I need to find out how to exclude path from spotlight search.
Eg. I want all application last opened a year ago, not including ones in my "Developer" folder.
I tried using the "URL" search field, but that gives me nothing.
Any clues?
Thanks

If you want to permanently exclude specific things from Spotlight all you need to do is drag the folder into System Prefs/Spotlight/Privacy. A temporary solution? I do not know if this is possible, sorry.

Smart folder library

I am wondering if you can use a smart folder as the itunes library. I ask because I am trying to remove the need for 2 itunes library, because I have an external hard drive which i sometimes connect to directly, and sometimes connect through another computer. I created a smart folder for these different locations which should return the connected library. however this doesn't appear to be working. Any advise?

Interesting. It isn't on my Mac.
The thing is, if you add the user Library folder into the Spotlight Privacy list in System Preferences, it stops things like search working inside apps like Mail.
All I want to do is exclude the user Library folder from one Smart Folder in the Finder. Basically, I want to make a "Created Today" Smart Folder that doesn't show me files received or sent via Mail.

Smart folder exclusion logic

How do I exclude folders or files with a certain name? In other words, I want a smart folder with all the folders but those with a name equals a value. Or select all the folders where name is not equal to a value.

Create Complex Searches in Spotlight

Migfiles with --exclude-paths...

About to pull the trigger on a NetWare to OES migration. Interesting issue with migfiles.
We have a volume which hosts a number of departmental mapped drives (drive T and we're planning to go through a department at a time. I was planning to use --exclude-path to indicate which departments we have finished.
I know I can do each sub-folder individually. That script is pretty long since there are 40 or so folders in the DEPTS volume.
When I use --exclude-path and the --delete switch, migfiles does indeed exclude the specified NetWare source from the copy job. Unfortunately though, it doesn't exclude that folder on the destination path. All the files in that folder on the Linux OES box get deleted.
Is there anyway to have migfiles ignore a destination folder when using --delete? (Yes, I know I can write a script for each subfolder...)
Here's the command line we're using
migfiles -s servername -V DATAEPTS/ -x /media/nss/DATA --exclude-path DATAEPTS/IT -i --debug --sync "d-m-Y H:M" --delete --update-ifnewer
Thanks
jc

$(UHi jc,
What is the advantage of using --exclude-path option for each folder which you do not want to migrate rather than migrating folder by folder? Or may be I have not understood the use case correctly?
migfiles provides facility where, you can write set of source paths in a file and corresponding destination paths in other file. You need to pass these files to -V and -x options of migfiles perpended with a symbol '@'.
For eg:
sourceFile:
DATAEPTS/dep1
DATAEPTS/dep2
DATAEPTS/dep3
destFile:
/media/nss/DATA/dep1
/media/nss/DATA/dep2
/media/nss/DATA/dep3
And the migfiles command would be (During sync):
migfiles -s servername -V @sourceFile -x @destFile -i --debug --sync "d-m-Y H:M" --delete --update-ifnewer
Let us know if this does not solve the problem?
As you said --delete option does not exclude paths specified in --exclude-path from destination. --exclude-path only excludes files from source server.
Thanks,
Akthar.
>>> 9555269<[email protected]> 3/23/2010 10:36 PM >>>
About to pull the trigger on a NetWare to OES migration. Interesting
issue with migfiles.
We have a volume which hosts a number of departmental mapped drives
(drive T and we're planning to go through a department at a time. I
was planning to use --exclude-path to indicate which departments we have
finished.
I know I can do each sub-folder individually. _That_ script is pretty
long since there are 40 or so folders in the DEPTS volume.
When I use --exclude-path and the --delete switch, migfiles does indeed
exclude the specified NetWare source from the copy job. Unfortunately
though, it doesn't exclude that folder on the destination path. All the
files in that folder on the Linux OES box get deleted.
Is there anyway to have migfiles ignore a destination folder when using
--delete? (Yes, I know I can write a script for each subfolder...)
Here's the command line we're using
migfiles -s servername -V DATAEPTS/ -x /media/nss/DATA --exclude-path
DATAEPTS/IT -i --debug --sync "d-m-Y H:M" --delete --update-ifnewer
Thanks
jc
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Smart Folder - Exclude Paths?

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