Spotlight Helps You Find It

Where did I file it? We’re all busy, so it’s time to get better organized.  Click on each illustration to enlarge it.

Look at Spotlight and Search.

When you highlight the title of a document do Command + I to bring up the information on it. Now write some key words in the Spotlight Comments box. See the screen shot at the left.

Let Spotlight help! Bring up Spotlight by doing the Command + space bar. Up comes the little box at the upper right hand side, top of the computer screen.

The screen shot below shows how I searched for my PMUG handout that described QR tags. When you hover your cursor over any one of the listings it shows where that document can be found. Click to open it from Spotlight or go to the folder where you filed it.

You can prescribe the parameters of Spotlight by going to System Preferences. You have 15 choices -- drag to the order you prefer. Note: you can also specify Privacy at that place in System Preferences > Spotlight.

To perform a more advanced search, you can include a Boolean search. See this:
http://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit04/primer04_08.phtml

If you know the type of item you're looking for, specify it.  Add the text "kind:" at the end of your search.  For example, for email messages that mention Anne Johnson, enter "Anne Johnson kind:email."

For other helps go to the main menu and look up Spotlight.  Under Help, enter Search and choose "show all help topics."  There are 15 Help topics and 7 support articles.  (My screen shot here is cut short.)

Let us know what you’re doing these days with your Mac. Email me at edpr (and then put in that @) commspeed.net

Have Mac? Have fun!


(The above is a copy of my handout for the February 18, 2011  PMUG meeting.)