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I am looking in a folder for a file which contains path in its name. I enter path in the search box, and select it to search the current folder (which is my default anyway). The tool tip indicates Filenames Name matches: path.
What I see is 110 items, none of which even contain the string path, let alone match.
What does the finder think I am looking for, and what do the results actually mean?
This is a relatively new iMac running MacOS Sierra.
In the Finder, use command-F to get a Finder search window. You will get:
There is now a bar with criteria added. You see a pop-up menu "Kind" followed by "is" and another pop-up menu "Any". Click the "Kind", and choose "Name" from that menu:
There now is a pop-up menu just following "Name", select "contains" from that, and type the word "path" in the field that follows.
You can add criteria by clicking the + sign at the right of the search bar.
Spotlight does seem to "power" the default search field in Finder windows. I use Spotlight only in desperation, as it almost never ever finds what I'm looking for. But with the search criteria in the Finder's search window I usually book success.
So, remember: command-F gets you a Finder search window with a criteria bar, and that certainly helps.
There are two issues here: by default, Finder will:
To solve the first problem, you need to to tell Finder just to match filenames. When you typed "path" into the search box, a dropdown menu should have appeared, with the option "Name matches: path". Select that, instead of just pressing Enter. Alternatively, you can type name:path into the search box, which has the same effect.
You can't really solve the second problem with Finder; even when restricting the search to the current folder, there is no way to exclude its sub-folders. For that, you'll need a third-party tool, or learn to use commands in the Terminal like ls *path*.
path?
Name matches: path, but I didn’t know about the name:path technique. It didn’t help either.
You can also add criteria to the pop-up list. A useful one is the file extension. E.g. here is the result for a search for all files that are images with file extension jpeg (not jpg) opened in the last 3 weeks:
