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.

Similar Messages

Use Applescript to find files with certain conditions

I am using a tool to batch convert audio files in APE format to MP3. I have thousands of files located in hundreds of folders and subfolders in my hard drive so I searched for all APE/FLAC files and then dragged and dropped them in the tool for conversion. The problem is I was not able to convert all the files successfully for a variety of reasons (original APE files are corrupt, etc.), as a result I was left with a situation where some of the folders have files convernted (both APE and MP3 in that folder) whereas others don't (APE only). Instead of manually go to each folder and subfolder to find which ones need me to convert is there an Applescript I can use to quickly list the APE files that have not been converted?

Hello
You may try the following shell script. Please specify DIR as the root directory to start searching. It will create output list named no_mp3_list.txt on desktop.
#!/bin/bash
#     list every *.ape file which has no corresponding *.mp3 file in the same directory
#     * name matching is done in case-insensitive fashion
DIR=~/Desktop/test                # root directory to start scanning
OUT=~/Desktop/no_mp3_list.txt    # output file
shopt -s nocasematch
while read -d $'\0' f
do
    [[ -e "${f:0:${#f}-3}mp3" ]] || echo "$f" >> "$OUT"
done < <(find "$DIR" -iname '*.ape' -print0)
And in case, here's a simple AppleScript wrapper for the above, which lets you choose the root directory.
set f to (choose folder with prompt "choose root folder to start searching")'s POSIX path
if f ends with "/" then set f to f's text 1 thru -2
do shell script "/bin/bash -s <<'EOF' -- " & f's quoted form & "
#     list every *.ape file which has no corresponding *.mp3 file in the same directory
#     * name matching is done in case-insensitive fashion
DIR=\"$1\"                        # root directory to start searching
OUT=~/Desktop/no_mp3_list.txt    # output file
shopt -s nocasematch
while read -d $'\\0' f
do
    [[ -e \"${f:0:${#f}-3}mp3\" ]] || echo \"$f\" >> \"$OUT\"
done < <(find \"$DIR\" -iname '*.ape' -print0)
EOF"
Hope this may help,
H

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

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

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/

Smart folders and .doc files

Problem: Smart folders do not show Microsoft .doc files. I have created a smart folder to show all documents I worked on recently. The search criteria in the smart folder are
kind -> document
last opened -> within last 14 days
The folder shows now all documents I opened during the previous 14 days, EXCEPT .doc files. Any solution?

Axxelerator wrote:
Somewhere must be a setting that tells spotlight which file is a document which one is not...
Actually, that information is a part of the metadata for the file. As I mentioned above, the actuall criteria used when you select Documents is the nearly all-inclusive
kMDItemContentTypeTree = public.content
You can read the metadata for any file using the Terminal. Launch Terminal, then type:
mdls
a space, then drag and drop a file into the Terminal window and hit the Return key. You'll see something like this:
NoobiX:~ francine$ mdls /Users/francine/Documents/wordocs/MyFamily.doc
kMDItemAuthors = (
"Francine Schwieder"
kMDItemContentCreationDate = 2008-08-31 12:49:48 -0700
kMDItemContentModificationDate = 2008-08-31 12:49:48 -0700
kMDItemContentType = "com.microsoft.word.doc"
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
"com.microsoft.word.doc",
"public.data",
"public.item",
"public.composite-content",
"public.content"
kMDItemDisplayName = "MyFamily.doc"
And so on, with all the rest of the metadata displayed. The relevant entry in this case is "public.content" statement in the kMDItemContentTypeTree.
I can't imagine that that entry is changed by saving something as .doc rather than .docx, which is why the only thing I can think of that would cause the behavior you are seeing is a Spotlight plist that is somehow messed up and excluding the extension doc. But I can't imagine how THAT would happen either.
As for AND searches: you already have that setup when you click the + button to add something. Thus, in the example above, the search is for files that are Documents AND were modified in the last 3 days, but are NOT jpegs, etc.
I have difficulty with correctly setting up the OR function, I always think that an option click on the + button, then selecting "Any" and adding a criterion ought to do it, but that doesn't seem to work as expected (or at least as I expect it to!). Anyway, one OR method that would yield approximately the same results as the example search above would be to select Kind is Other and then put this into the blank space after Other:
HTML OR text OR PDF OR RTF OR archive
Trouble is that if there WERE some doc or docx files, or some other sort of text based item, it wouldn't show up. I find it easier to just exclude things I know I don't want.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Use smart mailbox to find email with specific text in attached pdf

Does anyone known if a smart mailbox can be created to find emails with specific text within a pdf attached document. I know that spotlight can do this and it works fine but it would suite me better to be able to do this in mail.

After some digging, I found that Spotlight returns the pdf attachment (found within the library/mail/download folder), but not the actual email. The only time it returns the email is if the search text or numerics are coincidentally within the written contents or subject line.
Yes, i have tried setting up smart mailbox search criteria using the entire message contents but this does not find emails where the text exist within the pdf.
I've checked spotlight pref.'s and all categories are checked off.
Essentally, i need the smartbox search criteria to return results where the search text is found within the pdf attachment if possible. If this is not possible, i'll continue using spotlight searches outside of mail.
I appreciate any help you can offer.

Help! Cannot open files with certain applications

I updated to OS Tiger from OSX some weeks ago. Before, I could run a program that labels files in a given folder with names given in an Excel file (csv format). This "csv sorter" usually asks for the csv file once I put in the folder with the files that should be labeled. In the dialog window that opened I could just go through my harddrive to my csv file and choose it. Now the csv files always appear in pale grey and I cannot click on them. Has anybody an idea why certain programs should not recognize certain filetypes any more in OS Tiger? It seems like I cannot access any file with the csv sorter any more, no matter which file type. Thanks for your help!

found this on another websites forum .... it worked
I figured it out. Thanks everyone!
I had to turn on my wireless mouse... And even though I wasn't using my wireless mouse and just the trackpad...I had to turn on my wireless mouse then adjust those settings...Had to turn down the speed. Then Once I shut the mouse off and started to use the trackpad again it works perfectly.
I'm not sure why the mouse settings would change the trackpad settings but it did.

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.

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.

[SOLVED] Delete recursively all files with certain extensions

Hi all,
I am trying to recursively delete files with specific extensions. Many of these files have names containing spaces. The following, that I found googling around, didn't work:
find /media/TSUNAMI -name '*out' -or -name '*aux' -or -name '*log' -or -name '*.blg' -or -name '*.toc' -or -name '*.bcf' -or -name '*.swp' -or -name '*blx' | rm
find /media/TSUNAMI -name '*out' -or -name '*aux' -or -name '*log' -or -name '*.blg' -or -name '*.toc' -or -name '*.bcf' -or -name '*.swp' -or -name '*blx' -type f -ok rm '{}' ';'
find /media/TSUNAMI -name '*out' -or -name '*aux' -or -name '*log' -or -name '*.blg' -or -name '*.toc' -or -name '*.bcf' -or -name '*.swp' -or -name '*blx' -exec rm -f '{}' \;
find /media/TSUNAMI -name '*out' -or -name '*aux' -or -name '*log' -or -name '*.blg' -or -name '*.toc' -or -name '*.bcf' -or -name '*.swp' -or -name '*blx'| xargs /bin/rm -f
find /media/TSUNAMI -name '*out' -or -name '*aux' -or -name '*log' -or -name '*.blg' -or -name '*.toc' -or -name '*.bcf' -or -name '*.swp' -or -name '*blx' -exec /bin/rm -f '{}' \;
find /media/TSUNAMI -name '*out' -or -name '*aux' -or -name '*log' -or -name '*.blg' -or -name '*.toc' -or -name '*.bcf' -or -name '*.swp' -or -name '*blx'| xargs -0 rm
and I think that it was the following that deleted all the files (except the directories):
find /media/TSUNAMI -name '*out' -or -name '*aux' -or -name '*log' -or -name '*.blg' -or -name '*.toc' -or -name '*.bcf' -or -name '*.swp' -or -name '*blx' -type f -delete
What am I doing wrong here?
Thanks a lot in advance.
PS. While writing this I realized that I fogot the dot in out, aux, log, and blx
PS2. I'm experimenting around and don't mind deleting all the files if I do a mistake
Last edited by geo909 (2014-09-30 06:12:04)

geo909 wrote:Thanks so much. So what is different when we group those options with ?
The implicit "and" operator binds stronger than the "or" (-o) operator. Therefore
| -name a -o -name b -delete |
will be grouped like this:
| (-name a) -o ( -name b -delete ) | .
You want to group it like this:
| ((-name a ) -o ( -name b )) ( -delete ) | ,
so you need to add some manual grouping:
| ( -name a -o -name b ) -delete |
Last edited by progandy (2014-09-30 05:52:29)

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.

Making Smart Folders that only look in certain places

On Tiger, I could easily make a Smart Folder that only looked inside a given folder (and those below it) very easily..all I had to do was click the "other" button the appeared in the "Search:" bar in the Smart Folder. Then I could specify where I wanted the Smart Folder to look.
Try as I might, I've been unable to duplicate this functionality in Leopard. Am I missing something?

What you want is easily done, as V.K. pointed out, that is, to search a folder and all its sub-folders. The real problem with the disappearance of the Tiger "Other" is that you can not search two separate folders or places easily: your only choices in Leopard are This Mac, or the folder you initiate the search in. Searching two places can be done, as a Smart Folder, but not easily (you need a way to edit the code of the Smart Folder file--I use Property List Editor). You may find the little section on Spotlight in the Leopard Review I wrote helpful:
http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/Leopard/leospot.html
While the short-comings in the GUI are a bit annoying, Spotlight is basically working very well. If there is some particular short-coming you are finding particularly annoying (the inability to list results by size springs immediately to my mind), be sure to let Apple know:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html/
If no one complains they'll figure they got it right. If enough people complain they may well change it, as they did with Stacks and the transparency run amok things (both modified in the .2 update).
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

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.

Smart Folders to find files with certain priviledges

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