How to use wildcard characters in Spotlight search?

Question

I'm used to using the search window in Windows that provided the ability to use options such as:

• Date of Creation/Modification
• File Size
• File Extension
• Wild Card Characters

How can I search with Spotlight with similar criteria?

Answer 1

This article has a lot of good information on maximising the power of Spotlight search. To search by date, for example:

Check the Date Looking for a file that was created during a specific time period? Spotlight has a handle on dates. Typing date:today will bring up files you created, read, received, or opened today. You can also use the date: keyword with yesterday and tomorrow (for the latter, Spotlight restricts its results to iCal events and to-do items).

The latest version of Spotlight also lets you specify more parameters (whether a file was created or modified on a certain date), as well as enter an exact date or a range of dates. For example, you can type created:12/25/07 to find files authored on that date; type modified:<11/30/06 to look for files changed before that date; or type created:1/1/06-12/31/06 to locate files created between these two dates. Unfortunately, date: keywords don’t seem to work correctly all the time.

Answer 2

The Finder provides you with multiple options to constrain the search: (in 10.4) just select File>>Find... from the Finder's menu and click on the (+) button to get more options like the size, the kind of the file, or when it was last opened.