Finder search *only* searches file-names (Macbook Air, El Capitan)

Question

I'm on a Macbook Air, running El Capitan (10.11.6), and I'm not very knowledgeable about computers. I have a quick question about the Finder/Spotlight search.

So, as a grad student, I have tons and tons of PDFs on my computer. A lot of times, it's helpful for me to perform a keyword search to look for references (I often forget that I've downloaded relevant files), and Finder has done a perfectly serviceable job searching through file contents and through file names up until about the last week. Suddenly, about a week ago, I realized that Finder was only indexing search results that had the keyword in the file name.

I've tried poking around in search preferences to no avail, and I've looked for forums addressing this problem online. I have seen plenty of people who want to search file-names and can't (i.e., they can only search file contents), but I have not seen my problem anywhere.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what might be going on here and how I could fix it? I have even tried re-indexing the search results as suggested elsewhere on StackExchange as a general tip for people with faulty Finder searches, but that didn't do anything for me.

Thanks so much for your replies in advance!

Answer 1

Solution:

Navigate to System Preferences>Keyboard>Shortcuts>App Shortcuts

Press the 'plus' (add) button

In Application, choose Finder

For Menu Title, enter "Find by Name…" Do not use the "" and you must use an ellipsis (…), not three periods (...).

Enter your desired keyboard shortcut. I use CMD-F, replacing the default behavior of regular Find. I then repeated the process, adding a keyboard shortcut the the Finder of CMD-OPT-F for Find.

Answer 2

This doesn't solve your problem but until you do, you could use the free app EasyFind. This mac app lets you set your search parameters. You can search file names or content. You can search a certain folder or whole disk. It does a very fast search. It's available at the app store. This app could help you until the finder search is fixed. You may like it better than finder search, it has many options.

Answer 3

Don't do it through Spotlight.

Go to Finder and hit ⌘F. You should see your standard Finder window, but with two new rows at the top. One says "Search:" with two buttons, "This Mac" and the current folder. The default is to default to the current folder, but you can change that in Finder preferences (⌘,), at the bottom of the Advanced tab.

The second row is the important one, in which you can filter by things like name, the last time you opened the file, and, more pertinent to our discussion, its contents. I'm running Sierra, and on my computer, the default is "Name." Though I'm positive the default was once "Kind" (file type), I'm not sure when the switch occurred, so I'm not sure which one your computer shows. Either way, click on that drop down and select "Contents."

The row will now change to say "[Contents] contains" and an empty box. Type in what you're looking for in that box.

If you're still getting a lot of files in your search results, you can hit the little + and add another criterion to filter by "Kind," then select "PDF."

Notice that you can also hit the "save" button all the way to the right of the row beginning with "Search:" and save your search as a Smart Folder and place it in your sidebar. That way, with just a click, you can pull up all files with those search criteria.