The Spotlight Window phần 1

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3.2. The Spotlight Window As you may have noticed, the Spotlight menu doesn't list every match on your hard drive.

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Nội dung Text: The Spotlight Window phần 1

3.2. The Spotlight Window As you may have noticed, the Spotlight menu doesn't list every match on your hard drive. Unless you own one of those extremely rare 60-inch Apple Skyscraper Displays, there just isn't room. Instead, Spotlight uses some fancy behind-the-scenes analysis to calculate and display the 20 most likely matches for what you typed. But at the top of the menu, you usually see that there are many other possible matches; it says something like "Show All," meaning that there are other candidates. (Mac OS X no longer tells you how many other results there are.) There is, however, a second, more powerful way into the Spotlight labyrinth. And that's to use the Spotlight window, shown in Figure 3-2. 3.2.1. Spotlight Window from Spotlight Menu If the Spotlight menu—its Most Likely to Succeed list—doesn't include what you're looking for, click Show All (or just press Return or Enter). You've just opened the Spotlight window. Now you have access to the complete list of matches, neatly listed in what appears to be a standard Finder window. 3.2.2. Opening the Spotlight Window Directly You can also open the Spotlight window directly, without using the Spotlight menu as a trigger. Actually, there are three ways to get to the Spotlight window (Figure 3-2): • -F (for Find, get it?). When you choose File Find (or press -F), you get an empty Spotlight window, ready to fill in for your search. • Option- -Space bar. This keystroke opens the same window. But instead of starting empty and filling up, this window starts with a list of every single thing on your Mac and winnows down as you type a search query. Tip: You can change this keystroke to just about anything you like. See Section 3.3.1.
• Open any desktop window, and type something into the Search box at upper-right. Presto—the mild-mannered folder window turns into the Spotlight window, complete with search results. Once you type something to search for, the results are identical. Figure 3-2. The Spotlight window either lists nothing (top)—or everything on your hard drive (bottom), depending on how you open it. Either way, it's ready to search your entire hard drive (except other people's Home folders). But Spotlight has many tricks up its software sleeve. 3.2.3. The Basic Search When the Spotlight window opens, you can start typing whatever you're looking for into the Search box at the upper right. As you type—or, more realistically, a second or two after you type each letter—the window changes to reveal a list of the files and folders whose names contain what you typed. It's just like the Spotlight menu, but in a window with no 20-item results limit (Figure 3-2, bottom). While the searching is going on, a sprocket icon whirls away in the lower-right corner. To cancel the search in progress, click the button next to the phrase you typed. That button also clears the box so you can type a different word or phrase. 3.2.4. Power Searches The real beauty of the Spotlight window, though, is that it can hunt down icons using extremely specific criteria; it's much more powerful (and complex) than the Spotlight menu. If you spent enough time setting up the search, you could use this feature to find a document whose name begins with the letters Cro, is over one megabyte in size, was created after 10/1/07 but before the end of the year, was changed within the last week, has the file name suffix .doc, and contains the phrase "attitude adjustment." (Of course, if you knew that much about a file, you'd probably know where it is without having to use the Search window. But you get the picture.)
To use the Search window, you need to feed it two pieces of information: where you want it to search, and what to look for. You can make both of these criteria as simple or complex as you like. 3.2.5. Where to Look The three phrases at the top of the window—This Mac,"Folder Name,"and Shared— are buttons. Click one of these to tell Spotlight where to search: • This Mac means your entire computer, including secondary disks attached to it (or installed inside). • "Letters to Congress"(or whatever the current window is) limits the search to whatever window was open when you called up the Spotlight window. So, for example, if you want to search your Pictures folder, open it first and then hit - F. You'll see the "Pictures" button at the top of the window, and you can click it to restrict the search to that folder. Note: If no folder window is open when you press -F, this button says "Casey" (or whatever); it identifies your Home folder. That is, Spotlight is prepared to search all your stuff on this Mac. Shared. Click this button to expand the search to your entire network and all the computers on it. (This assumes, of course, that you've brought their icons to your screen as described in Chapter 13. If there aren't any shared folders or disks, this button doesn't appear at all.) If the other computers are Macs running Leopard, Spotlight can even search their files just the way it does on your own Mac—finding words inside the files, for example. If they're any other kind of computer, Spotlight can only search for files by name. Tip: If the object of your quest doesn't show up, you can adjust the scope of the search with one quick click on another button at the top of the window, like This Mac or Shared. Spotlight updates the results list. 3.2.6. Search by Name/Search by Contents
The two other buttons at the top of the Spotlight window are also very powerful: • Contents. This button, the factory setting, works just the way Spotlight usually does. It's prepared to search for the words inside your files, along with all the metadata attached to them. • File Name. All of this searching-inside-files business is well and good. But there's no denying that sometimes, you already know a file's name—you just don't know where it is. In this case, it's far faster to search by name, just as people did before Spotlight came along. The list of results will be far shorter, and you'll spot what you want much faster. That's why this button is so welcome. Tip: If you press Shift as you open the File menu (or as you press -F), the Find command changes to Find by Name. It opens the Find window, preset to search for icons by name. What a shortcut! 3.2.7. Complex Searches If all you want to do is search your entire computer for files containing certain text, you may as well use the Spotlight menu described at the beginning of this chapter. Figure 3-3. By repeatedly clicking the + button, you can turn on as many criteria as you'd like; each additional row further narrows the search. The power of the Spotlight window, though, is that it lets you design much more specific searches, using over 125 different search criteria: date modified, file size, the "last opened" date, color label, copyright holder's name, shutter speed (of a digital photo), tempo (of a music file), and so on. Figure 3-3 illustrates how detailed this kind of search can be. To set up a complex search like this, you'll use the second row of controls at the top of the window. And third, and fourth, and fifth. Each time you click one of the + buttons at the right end of the window, a new criterion row appears, whose pop-up menus you can use to specify what date, what file size, and so on. Figure 3-3 shows how you might build, for example,
a search for all photo files that you've opened within the last week that contain a Photoshop layer named Freckle Removal. To delete a row, click the – button at its right end. Tip: If you press Option, the + button changes into a … button. When you click it, you get sub-rows of parameters for a single criterion. And a pop-up menu that says Any, All, or None appears at the top, so that you can build what are called exclusionary searches.The idea here is that you can set up a search for documents created between November 1 and 7 or documents created November 10 through 14. Or files named Complaint that are also either Word or InDesign files.The mind boggles. Here's a rundown of the ways you can restrict your search, according to the options you find in the first pop-up menu of a row. Note that after you choose from that first pop-up menu (Last Opened, for example), you're supposed to use the additional pop-up menus to narrow the choice ("within last," "2," and "weeks," for example), as you'll read below. Note: It may surprise you that choosing something from the Kind pop-up menu triggers the search instantly. As soon as you choose Applications, for example, the window fills with a list of every program on your hard drive. Want a quick list of every folder on your entire machine? Choose Folders. (Want to see which folders you've opened in the last couple of days? Add another row.)If you also type something into the Search box at the very top of the window—before or after you've used one of these pop-up menus—the list pares itself down to items that match what you've typed. 3.2.7.1. Kind When the first pop-up menu says Kind, you can use the second pop-up menu to indicate what kind of file you're looking for: Applications, Documents, Folders, Images, Movies, Music, PDF files, Presentations, Text files, or Other. For example, when you're trying to free up some space on your drive, you could round up all your movie files, which tend to be huge. Choosing one of these file types makes the window begin to fill with matches automatically and instantly. And what if the item you're looking for isn't among the nine canned choices in the second pop-up menu? What if it's an alias, or a Photoshop plug-in, or some other type?
That's what the Other option is all about. Here, you can type in almost anything that specifies a kind of file: Word, Excel, TIFF, JPEG, AAC, final cut, imovie, alias, zip, html, or whatever. 3.2.7.2. Last opened date/Last modified date/Created date When you choose one of these options from the first pop-up menu, the second popup menu lets you isolate files, programs, and folders according to the last time you opened them, the last time you changed them, or when they were created.