The act of searching for data by providing keywords which are either checked directly against contents, or against a search index in order to provide relevant results.
0
votes
1answer
21 views
Safari web browser do not find strings on a page in the common way
How to switch Safari to a normal web page searching instead of finding only whole words?
Ex: there ase some words on a page: hello_world, ask_different. When I search for hello, world, ask, different ...
1
vote
1answer
36 views
Searching for punctuation in Preview
In Preview (v 5.3 on 10.6.8), if I search for a single letter such as k in a pdf, the program will find and highlight every instance of that letter in the pdf.
However, if I search for a punctuation ...
0
votes
1answer
31 views
Quick search in folder by key press
I switched from PC to Mac, in pc when you're in explorer, you press a key and it highlights the first result of a file/folder that starts with the pressed key, and when you press again it goes to ...
3
votes
2answers
161 views
How can I do a full text search of plaintext files in my DropBox folder?
I understand that Spotlight will search the full text of files in any folder and will show files that contain instances of the searched text. But I would also like to see highlighted instances of the ...
0
votes
2answers
131 views
OS X: Any PDF to Kindle format converter to read technical material on Amazon Kindle?
I like to read course material on Kindle. I merge all lecture slides with Automator and then send them to my Kindle email. Earlier, I have used Readle's Documents app (a spinoff of PDF Expert) where I ...
4
votes
1answer
98 views
How can I search my entire drive for a file without getting recursively stuck in /Volumes?
I'm looking for a txt file that contains a word. However when I search my hard drive (or my TimeCapsule backup) I always get stuck in a recursive search of /Volumes/Hard Drive (etc).
The hardlink ...
-1
votes
1answer
43 views
Search over different types of documents such as DjVU sometimes without OCR?
Suppose Apple products such as iOS devices and OS X devices at hand. You want to make things searchable. Some files such as converted PDFs lack OCR so you cannot search them. Some formats are not ...
0
votes
1answer
497 views
Spotlight doesn't work anymore in OS X Mountain Lion
I can't get Spotlight to search for any documents.
When I search the Finder for documents, nothing happens and the Spotlight search through the menu bar only shows up web searches.
4
votes
6answers
308 views
Do any OS X apps ease Search and Replace across multiple files?
I'm looking for an OS X tool which allows me to search and replace a search string in multiple files. The requirements are the following:
Search and Replace
Search by regular expression
Search ...
0
votes
0answers
32 views
How can I stop 'bin' items from appearing when searching Mail.app?
Whenever I search for a particular message, the results throw up tens of seemingly related messages/part messages from what appears to be the "bin" folder.
What exactly is the bin folder (junk, ...
0
votes
0answers
12 views
Smart Folder: are placemarkers allowed? what is allowed?
What is allowed in the text field of Smart Folder criteria, such when I select that the Name should match something? Can I use * to match any text? What about ?? What about regular expressions?
Where ...
3
votes
2answers
89 views
Non-recursive spotlight search?
When using the Spotlight search at the top right of a finder window, I often want the search to be non-recursive, i.e. only look at files in that specific directory, not any directories within it. Is ...
1
vote
2answers
85 views
Does the search in Finder need spotlight?
I just reinstalled OS X Lion and turned off the spotlight immediately.
I noticed that search in Finder stopped working. Is this because of disabling spotlight? Is there a way to get this back without ...
1
vote
1answer
280 views
Rules for Spotlight search (on osx 10.8)
I absolutely do not understand the rules that Spotlight (osx 10.8) uses to search my files. If I enter the query sbml and select filename from the dropdown menu, these are the results that come up:
...
1
vote
0answers
30 views
iTunes 11 doesn't include words between parentheses for search
Today I found out that when searching in iTunes, it doesn't include words in songtitles that are between parentheses. I have lots of remixed songs and they always mention the artist between ...
0
votes
1answer
39 views
How do I enable Handwrite on the Google Search app for iOS?
I figured how to enable the Google Handwrite feature from Safari (Browse to google.com/preferences. and enable handwrite), but cant seem to find a way to do the same in the Google Search App for iOS.
...
2
votes
1answer
57 views
Locate empty folders within a folder
I want to find all folders within a given folder that contain no files (but folders are ok). This needs to be recursive - it looks in all child folders.
I can find folders that are completely empty ...
1
vote
1answer
79 views
Is there any way to disable Mac OS X global search string propagation?
Mac OS X has a feature where if you use any search box in any app, it automatically overwrites every other search box with the text you searched.
I find this rarely useful and it often interferes ...
0
votes
1answer
69 views
OS X Mail: Search within message (including header)
I would like to search within an individual email message using OS X Mail version 5.3 or above (Lion, Mountain Lion). I would like this search to include the email header.
Using Edit > Find > Find… ...
0
votes
1answer
306 views
How to make Spotlight index PDF documents to search faster or on my command?
I need to search some words in many PDF documents. It worked very well when I searched over old documents but my OS X has not indexed yet the new PDFs. How can I search over the new PDFs?
1
vote
4answers
2k views
Searching in iTunes 11 no longer filters column browser options?
In iTunes 10.x, if you searched for items (top right) it would filter the column browser to only show values that matched your search query. Now when I search, it filters the list of items, but not ...
0
votes
0answers
33 views
Search across multiple OS X computers via offline indexing
A feature I would love to see in Spotlight or some other Search/Indexing application would be the ability to search multiple desktops even when they are not currently connected via AFP/Bonjour or ...
2
votes
1answer
248 views
Xcode doesn't show up in spotlight results, neither search results
I haven't noticed exactly when it happened but previously I was always using spotlight to run Xcode. Now if i'm typing "Xcode" in it, only folders containing this name show up, or some xcode projects, ...
0
votes
1answer
100 views
Software for managing Word files (doc, docx) archive
I have an archive of .doc/.docx files, which I'm frequently using to pull some information. I'm looking for some software that would allow me to search through the content of all these files (Mac OS X ...
0
votes
1answer
36 views
How to focus on list of found files after search in Finder using the keyboard with full keyboard access activated?
I like using the keyboard as much as possible. In particular, I'd like to be able to activate a search, type my search term, press a key to move to the search list, and then use cursor keys to ...
0
votes
1answer
26 views
Can I search for a multi-word expression in Preview?
What can I do to search for a multi-word expression such as "little bug" in Preview? I want to return only words together and in that order. My first reflex was to try double quotes, but it looks like ...
2
votes
2answers
208 views
How to locate a file in Spotlight using folder and file name?
I often want to navigate to a file or folder that does not have a unique name. Instead, the parent folder in combination with the file or foldern name makes it unique. Here are a few examples:
I ...
3
votes
4answers
92 views
Keyboard-only folder navigation with auto complete
This is one feature of Windows 7 Start menu that I haven't been able to replace in OS X ML.
In Windows:
Press Windows key
Start typing, for example: H:\folder\phot
Use arrow keys to highlight the ...
2
votes
2answers
901 views
Mountain Lion - Finder - Search by file name
I just upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion and I seem to be missing one bit of functionality that I used all the time in Finder. I could press Command+Shift+F and search for files by file ...
0
votes
0answers
89 views
Messages quit searching names
Recently the search function in text messages on my iPhone 4 quit searching the contact names and only searches the text of the messages. Now if I want to recall the latest message I received from ...
2
votes
1answer
105 views
How to use Finder to find all files that do not match a certain criteria?
How can I use Finder's search feature to find all files that do not match a certain criteria?
For instance, all files that don't end in ".txt" in the current folder.
2
votes
1answer
705 views
How can I change the default search engine in Safari?
Safari for OS X only offers three search engines:
Google, Yahoo, Bing
I want to use https://startpage.com as a default search engine to search directly from the unified URL/search bar.
Is this ...
-1
votes
2answers
939 views
iOS: App to search All Content in PDF files?
There are many apps that have search over the names of the files but not all content in the files. It is very slow to test all apps such as iAnnotate, PDF Expert, Amazing PDF Expert and GoodReader. ...
3
votes
2answers
260 views
Can “mdfind” search for phrases and not just unordered words?
Is there a way to search for an exact phrase using the mdfind utility? For example, I created two text documents titled "test1" and "test2". The contents of "test1" are:
I love Apple
And the ...
0
votes
0answers
53 views
What is wrong in this Python search tool for OpenOffice documents?
I run
python loook.py TODO this.odt
and I get
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "loook.py", line 439, in <module>
app = Application(root)
File "loook.py", line 72, in __init__
...
0
votes
1answer
345 views
iOS application that allows search in Word documents?
I have a huge .doc (Microsoft Word) file (several megabytes) and I need to search it on my iPhone. I have tried like 5 different editors and readers to no avail.
Is there any application that allows ...
0
votes
0answers
128 views
How to create a smart album in iPhoto where photos are not geotagged in Europe, or have no geotag?
I am currently on vacation in Europe and am taking lots of pictures. Unfortunately my wonderful camera (S95) does not geotag the photos. So I am doing it by hand. It actually doesn't take too much ...
5
votes
2answers
2k views
How to display the full path of files found by the Finder “Find” function?
I'm trying to use the Finder to search my code base. For example I would like to find every files that ends with ".m" and contains "keyDown".
Finder does this, but in the Finder window showing the ...
1
vote
1answer
167 views
OS X 10.5/10.6/10.7, Search, Spotlight
I'm handling a migration from an on old Mac server to a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine running a 12 TB (10 usable) RAID 5 server. It's using an SMB share and now the OS X 10.5/10.6 users can search - ...
1
vote
1answer
83 views
How can I search for photos taken at a specific time?
All my photos are in iPhoto and I want to be able to search for photos taken at a specific time. Happy to use an app or command to search at file system level from Terminal if I need to.
Smart ...
0
votes
0answers
51 views
Analyze a bunch of files and categorize them according to their content, content-duplicates possible with different format
I have material such as images, PDFs, DOC and DOCX with a lot of duplicated items but in different format. I may have a paper in PDF and then I have it also in DOC and DOCX. I want to somehow ...
2
votes
1answer
220 views
Why do some app spotlight results show the “.app” extension, but not all?
Even though I've explicitly set the Finder preference to display all file extensions, I'm still finding that some apps do not show the file name extension in their Spotlight result.
Here are some ...
1
vote
1answer
27 views
How to use find to get only string sequence, not within other words
How do I use the Command ⌘+F find to get only a in the text a apple, instead of highlighting both a and a in the word "apple".
4
votes
1answer
72 views
Search for one letter only
In Apple apps with a search feature, how do I only search for one letter?
Let's say I'm reading a math paper, but forgot what the variable "s" meant. In Windows/Linux apps I could just include spaces ...
0
votes
0answers
311 views
Finder Search attribute “Tags”
It looks like the search attribute "Tags" is no longer available in the Mountain Lion Finder. I used this to quickly find Open Meta Taggged files on my Mac by means of a Smart Folder. Is there an ...
1
vote
0answers
537 views
How to setup a Mac for kiosk mode video presentation?
My situation is: 2 iMacs (Lion), one displays a slide show and the other one a video.
If a user comes to the iMac and wants to play the video again, he should be able to play the video with one click ...
0
votes
0answers
110 views
Find multi-line block using grep and/or automator with BBEdit
I have an xml file output from WordPress.
I have BBEdit as my main search tool.
I am on a Mac running 10.7.4
I am trying to find a muli-line block of text that starts with <item> and end with ...
1
vote
2answers
367 views
How can I use Regular Expressions in Spotlight on Mountain Lion?
How can I use Regular Expressions in Spotlight on Mountain Lion?
I want to use my knowledge of regular expressions to make my search results more exact.
0
votes
0answers
121 views
'Find text' in document occasionally doesn't work in Word 2011 for Mac
It's a problem I saw on a friend's computer (Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard). Occasionally (in about 1 of 10-20 cases) Word 2011 doesn't find a text which is in the document. Then, changing the to other ...
0
votes
0answers
144 views
When configuring a Smart Search (/Folder) in Finder, are any attributes that refer to the file locations/paths or names of containing folders?
I want to design a Smart Search/Folder that will display every relevant file in my Library folder, while excluding files in which I have no interest. The criteria for "files in which I have no ...
