Spotlight OR smart folder sorting question ...

Is there any way to sort Spotlight searches [after clicking "Show All"] OR smart folders, by something besides "Name", "Kind", or "Last Opened"? I clearly remember being able to sort by Size, Date Modified, etc in Tiger (OS X 10.4)... but for some reason all the ways I usually arrange folders are greyed out.
Any success with this?
-Rich

It's a really stupid design decision on the part of Apple, that's what it is. One of the very BEST things I rejoiced in when I switched from Windows to Mac was the very quick, simple, intuitive search capabilities. But now with Leopard, Apple have gone and crippled it. Really, really dumb. I hope they're going to fix it very soon.

Similar Messages

Smart folder sorting?

I have long relied on smart folders to help me find the largest files on my hard drive, letting me save space when necessary... however, I can't seem to find any size-sorting option on Smart Folders this time around (when it was really easy to find in OS X 10.4). I can sort in regular folders by size, but not in Smart Folders... anyone figure this out?

Two options:
1) Click Cmd+F. This will create a search. With the little drop down menu on the left (might start with "Kind") select "Other". A window pops up and you can select "Size" (if you use this a lot, select the tick box on the right that says "In Menu"). Then set your size and Spotlight will find it for you. Then, once the search is running/ran, click on the "Save" button, and it will save to your Saved Searches in your sidebar (which I think is a cool addition)
2) Similar to the first... Press OptCmdN (or select New Smart Folder from the File menu) just like before. In the toolbar, there should be a little gear (if not, add it to the toolbar by going to the View menu and selecting Customize Toolbar). Click on the gear and then on the option "Show Search Criteria". Repeat the second half of option 1 above and TA-DA!, you have yourself a new smart folder.

Smart Folder - Sort in alphabetical order

''locking as a duplicate - https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/809560''
Hi,
Is there an option to sort Smart Folder in alphabetical order?
Thanks!
Stéphane

''locking as a duplicate - https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/809560''
Hi,
Is there an option to sort Smart Folder in alphabetical order?
Thanks!
Stéphane

Smart Folder sorted by event titles

I have two smart albums which have very similar criterias. The only difference is that one includes pictures from overseas whereas the other doesn't.
However, viewing the two smart albums is a different experience altogether. The Overseas Smart Album doesn't sort the pictures in any way, whereas the other one sorts it by event title.
Both smart albums have the same preference for 'viewing': 'Sort by' is 'date, and the 'Event titles' can't be selected.
I would really like to view the smart album sorted by event titles. How do I do it? Why can I do it for one but not for the other?
Help appreciated! I have already tried lots of different options!
Tks
Petra

Searched a bit more and found this as an answer...worked just fine
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9632173&#9632173

Folding sorting question

Hey just got my first mac, was wondering, like i could previously in windows when i arranged a folder by name / date / modified etc I could choose to let it effect all subfolders also, is there a way to do a similar thing in mac os

Yes, it's not the exact same, but you can click on a folder then click view then click show view options. This will open a window showing you options they will apply to all folders and files.

Address Book - smart folder - need to delete

I have created a smart folder that for some reson lock up my Address Book when ever I click on it (applicaton not responding and have to force quit). How can I delete the the smart folder in question. If I click on it the program immediately freezes.
I do have several days of time machine backups I could retore from. I am also synced to mobil me and my iphone.
What and where is the file I would need to replace to remove the last added smart folder?
Thanks,

You might want to try:
Back up your address book (File -> Export)
exiting the Address Book
Going to your Library/Application Support/AddressBook directory (in Finder, Go -> Go to folder -> ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook
Moving the AddressBook-v22 to your desktop
Open the Metadata directory
Use the finder's search feature to search in that directory for "Group"
You should find files with names that contain "ABSmartGroup" - move these to your desktop
Restart Address Book
That should remove them, but don't hold me to it (make sure you have backups). This is more mucking with the Address Book than I'd like to do. If the Address Book starts acting weird, you can move these files back to the original location.

How do you sort Pics in Smart Folder? Photos App

How do you sort pics in a smart folder in the Photos App? Date, Name, etc.

Yes, when I do that it sorts the albums in the folder by name.
I may have misused terminology, I meant Smart Albums not smart folders, if this makes a difference.
Thanks for your help!

Spotlight comments search and smart folder fails

Spotlight search of the "Spotlight Comments" field fails after a file is saved in TextEdit or iWork programs.
I reproduced this failure, 100% of the time, in OS X 10.8 and 10.8.1 (with iCloud enabled or with it iCloud disabled) and can not reproduce this failure in Mac OS X 10.7.x
The steps to reproduce are simple and quick:
Create a new test file in TextEdit and Save it on the Mac (saved as, for example, test.rtf)
Quit TextEdit
In the Get Info panel for the test.rtf file and enter some unique text in the Spotlight Comments: field, for example XYZZY:
In Finder create a new Smart Folder (File > New Smart Folder)
Create a search criteria in the Spotlight comment field for the unique text from step 3 (XYZZY in this example) and hit Save and name the Smart FolderNote, the test.rtf file immediately appears in the smart folder
Open the test.rtf with TextEdit and change the text and Save the file.
Note, as soon as you hit Save in TextEdit the test.rtf file disapears from the SmartFolder. This is the error. Also note, the Spotlight Comment value (in this example, the text XYZZY) is unchanged, it still exists.
See attached screen shot after step 7 that shows the smart folder no longer shows the text.rtf file even though the search criteria is met.
I have reproduced this error with TextEdit and Pages and Numbers but not with other applications that are not iCloud enabled.

Clendenen02 wrote:
where should I run the code? in the terminal, or an applescript, or should put it in xcode and run it from there or the terminal.
What MrHoffman said.
But if it's easier, you can wrap it in Automator and have Automator ask for the Folders: (Test on a sample of your files before running on all 700 files)
(do you really own 700 movies??)
The Workflow is:
Put this in the Run Shell Script Action (and pass input as arguments":
PicDir=$1
MovDir=$2
for f in $PicDir/*
do
     if [ ! -d "$f" -a "${f##*.}" = "jpeg" ]; then
          comment=$(mdls -raw -name kMDItemFinderComment "$f")
          if [[ $comment != "(null)" ]]; then
               picname=${f##*/}
               movname=${picname%.*}.m4v
               if [[ -e "$MovDir"/$movname ]]; then
osascript <<-EOF
tell application "Finder"
set comment of file (POSIX file "$MovDir/$movname") to "$comment"
end tell
EOF
               fi
          fi
     fi
done
(BTW, I know that this is a bit of sloppy scripting (wraping an osascript in a Bash Script wrapped in Automator, but it does what you need)

Simple smart folder question

So this is what I want to do...
Every time a imagine (png, jpg, gif, whatever) gets placed on my desktop i want it to instead go to a smart folder on my desktop called "random images" or whatever. for the life of me i can't seem to figure out how to do this relatively simple thing. any help would be appreciated.

I have all my Internet applications set so that the things they download all go to the same folder, called Downloads, at the root level of my drive. Just as in Safari they all have preferences you can set about where you want their downloaded items to go. If you want to further sort things you'll need to investigate Applesript, write a folder action script that automatically puts downloaded images into a sub-folder, and then attach the folder action to the Downloads folder. Of course this might not work that great for a mail application....it could result in not seeing any attached images in the body of the email.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Smart Folder Based On Spotlight Comments

I'm trying to set up a smart folder to contain all files that I've made a given Spotlight comment for. When I start to set up a New Smart Folder and choose the Comment drop down and input the comment that I've tagged several files with (by using Command-I on the given files) it doesn't seem to take. Is this supposed to work? If not, what does the "Comment" drop down list item refer to in the New Smart Folder dialogue? Thanks for any clues about this.

Unfortunately this seems yet another case where one set of programmers in the Spotlight project were not talking to another set of programmers. When I selected "Comment:Contains http" I got one hit, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the many files I have that have their source URL in the Spotlight Comment field. I quickly discovered that it was because Comment actually issues this query:
(kMDItemComment = 'http*'cd) && (kMDItemContentType != com.apple.mail.emlx) && (kMDItemContentType != public.vcard)
When I used a metadata reader to examine one of my files that had the URL in the Spotlight Comment field I discovered that the comment is actually entered in this metadata field:
kMDItemFinderComment = "http://image.versiontracker.com"
So the metadata programmers have the tag as "kMDItemFinderComment" while the programmers for the search criteria assumed it was "kMDItemComment"--so the search won't work.
What I did was select Raw Query, and then entered this:
kMDItemFinderComment = "http://*"
The asterisk * is a wild card standing for "anything at all following http://"--this promptly found 23 files in my current Downloads folder. Using this as the Raw Query and selecting Computer to search:
kMDItemFinderComment = width*
Immediately found 7, 665 images on my three internal drives that have their dimensions given in the Comment box.
Francine
Francine
Schwieder
PS--I just sent this to Tiger Feedback.

Library Folder Panel Sorting Question

Can the folder sort criteria be changed in the library module folders panel (Win LR V 2.2)?
I have looked in the help and either I overlooked the instructions or they are not there. I did find out how to change the contents of the folder display but not the sorting of the display.
My problem is that I use a folder hierarchy of c:\yyyy\mm\dd-subject and the folder display only sorts on the lowest folder in the hierarchy. Therefore, if I have two (or more) folder sets ending with 05-james they display one under the other even though the full folder path may be c:\2005\03\05-james and c:\2008\11\05-james. I would like the sorting to be on the entire path as is done in Photoshop Elements folder view.
Thanks for any insights or help.
Cliff

I would agree with Lee Jay; if you have a parent folder, then everything in the folder hierarchy displays correctly, in numerical order (using your setting of c:\yyyy\). And it displays sub-folders in numerical/alphabetic order too.
So if you right-click on your current folders and pick "Add Parent Folder" it should work. In your example, it will create a parent with just the drive letter C: and all your sub-folders should now be listed in correct order. If that does not work, just highlight the newly-created top-level folder, right-click and pick "Remove" and in the pop-up window click the "Promote sub-folders" button; that will get you back to where you were.
Another option is to do it in Windows. Create a folder called, for example, Photos on your drive. Move all your photo folders into that folder. When you start Lightroom, all folders will be shown as missing, but the job of finding them is simple; a right-click on the missing folder and picking the pop-up menu item with words similar to "locate missing folder" will find your "missing" folders.

Smart Folder Question

Hello People,
I am trying to do something fairly basic with a Smart Folder but it's not working and I must be doing something wrong, here's the deal:
I have an email account called [email protected], where our software sends us error reports when the users says "report to developer". So I've got lots of error reports. (Well not that many, but I've got quite a lot)
I'd like to create a smart folder that says:
IS IN MAILBOX "XXXXX"
AND
ENTIRE MESSAGE -> DOES NOT CONTAIN "a string i'd like to place like this one".
In theory this seems easy, but in practice is not working. I seems as if the "Contains, Does Not Contain, Begins with, etc." is always behaving like "Contains".
I've placed a screnshot that shows exactly that. If you take a look at it, the message shown has exactly that string on the first line "while establishing a connection".
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/9180/errormailgk9.th.jpg
Could it be possible that "Entire Message" doesn't search message text?
Thanks

Austin Kinsella1 wrote:
Well, it is not just you - I have just tried a couple of smart mailboxes, and "does not contain" produces the same results as "contains". As far as I can see contains produces correct results.
Hhmmmm is this a bug or something we're not doing "right"?
By the way, thank you for trying

Smart folder view options

When is apple going to fix Smart Folder List View Options so that we can sort by Size etc.....?

Yeah, when is Apple going to fix this? Right now, smart folders have the name of the item, which is great. They have the kind of the item, which is great. Unfortunately, the ONLY other column is Last Opened, and I have never found a use for that. It tells me nothing about the file in question.
When I try to change the columns using Command-J, the Finder says that there are no options. The interface is almost there, but for now, smart folders are useless.
Also, why won't the Open/Save dialog show the smart folders? It has those weird "media" searches, but I can't use the useful searches that I already have, even in an Open Dialog.

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.

Copy files to Smart Folder

I have created a Smart Folder but cannot drag/drop files to that Smart Folder.
What am I doing wrong?

A Smart Folder is not a place, it's a list. It's the answer to question. For instance: What files were modified yesterday? Or what files have a 'work' comment in the Spotlight Comments? To get a file listed in a Smart Folder make sure it fits the answer to the question...

Spotlight OR smart folder sorting question ...

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