How to exclude Mail messages from Finder search?

Question

I want to exclude Mail messages from showing up in Finder search.

->FINDER, NOT SPOTLIGHT<-

I have asked this question on other platforms, and I have found the emphasis is very necessary. Yes, you can exclude Mail from Spotlight by going to the Spotlight preference pane and unchecking Mail. This has no effect on Finder, at least in Mavericks (it did in Lion. I skipped Mountain Lion, but I believe it also suffers from this problem.)

You can also narrow what IS returned in Finder search, by clicking the plus sign and adding filters. But this is not a solution either: you can only filter what "is" returned, there is no "is not" option.

For bonus points, answers about how to exclude folders would also be wonderful. If you have ebooks, you know that they too turn up in pretty much every search. Put simpler, I just want the Spotlight preferences to apply to Finder...like they used to.

Answer 1

It is inconvenient, but if you add -kind:mail after your search term in the Finder, it will exclude Mail messages too.

Answer 2

First of all, I should point out that — despite what it looks like — search in Finder is indeed Spotlight but with more options shown. The following information is based on research I've just done on my Mac running Mavaricks (10.9.2):

The reason why it doesn't work to just uncheck Mail is because (confusingly) the SysPrefs > Spotlight > Search Results tab only applies to the top-right corner Spotlight search and not the one in Finder.

However, there is a work-around that answers 2 of your question and proofs that Spotlight is the engine for Finder searches (and ditto for other apps, including Mail and Outlook):

You can exclude a folder from Spotlight-powered searches by dragging said folder to the list in the SysPrefs > Spotlight > Privacy tab.

Caveat/but/proof:

If you were to do this with the data folder of Mail.app (~/Library/Mail), you'll get this warning:

...Telling you that "the search feature won't work in some applications" If you click OK, Mail messages won't show up in Finder (or Spotlight) anymore but the same will be the case for the internal search feature in Mail.app itself, since it's Spotlight-powered...

(@Aaron Bertrand: Same for Outlook, since it's also Spotlight-powered. See first link above)

With regular folders — i.e. not in your hidden-by-default Library folder — you won't get a warning and hiding'll work with no caveats.

There actually is an option to tell Finder to not seach for a given type by writing "NOT eml" for instance, in the search field, which would exclude e-mail files. If you really wanted to, you could create an Automator-service and bind ⌘+F to it via SysPrefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts. The Automator AppleScript would be akin to:

activate application "Finder"
tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "f" using command down
    keystroke " NOT eml"
    key code 123 using command down #123 = Left Arrow, so we're moving the cursor to the beginning of the field
end tell

(I suck at AppleScript so there might be a cleverer way to go about it)

Answer 3

The root cause of this problem is that Finder by default searches "This Mac" - i.e. everywhere, including the Mail folders - so every search is dominated by dozens of unwanted email hits. Fortunately there's a simple solution:

In Finder...Preferences...Advanced, select "Search the current folder". This will limit the search to whatever folder you were in when you requested the search, thus excluding emails (and a lot of other unnecessary stuff too by the way). Problem solved.

Here's a link to the details: http://osxdaily.com/2013/03/12/change-finder-search-to-look-in-current-folder-rather-than-everywhere-in-mac-os-x/

Answer 4

I know this is an old question, but up to this date the issue with Finder search including way too many results has not been solved by Apple. What has changed is the format needed for the suggested answer (it doesn't work anymore). Also I found a way to very quickly add the suggested trick to any search, no typing required.

Step 1: create a search that excludes the file types you don't want to be included in your searches. I used NOT kind:olk15 AND NOT kind:eml AND NOT kind:ZIP The olk15 is for Outlook mail, that will not be excluded when only filtering 'eml' out. I also excluded ZIP files, but that is a personal preference.

Note: as you can see I did NOT search for any text, so the results will be about any file on your system. No problem, please read on.

Step 2: use the 'Save' search option and add the search filter to your sidebar. I named my search 'NotEmail'

There is no step 3 :-)

Whenever you want to do a clean search, first click your saved search and then use the search field to enter the text within that search you want to find.