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0
votes
0answers
28 views

reinstall stock applications on OS X Lion

I uninstalled the calculator app that comes with Lion using Appcleaner, now my Spotlight can't do math anymore. I am using Alfred for now, however I still prefer Spotlight since it just gets the job ...
1
vote
1answer
23 views

Disable Spotlight to search certain type of files (e.g. based on file extension)?

I have searched for this one.. without luck. Especially, I would like Spotlight not to index target/ folders. Thanks for any hint.
0
votes
0answers
51 views

OSX Spotlight not removing web searches

I've unchecked everything but I still can't seem to remove the websearches. Is there a way to turn that off? I've tried adding volume to privacy and removing it to rebuild the index, no go. Also ...
1
vote
1answer
62 views

How to Prevent Spotlight from Indexing Non-Apps in /Applications Directory?

The only thing I need indexed in the /Applications folder are the .app files. Is there any way to setup a filter to have mds or Spotlight ignore everything in /Applications except .apps? Otherwise, ...
2
votes
1answer
36 views

How to launch second process of a program from Spotlight on Snow leopard

I usually launch programs from Spotlight, and there is one program that I want to launch second process. The program in particular is Mathematica. The second process of Mathematica allows me to keep ...
0
votes
1answer
57 views

Exclude pyc files from spotlight results (Mac OS X)

How should I go about disabling specific files with extensions .pyc from showing up in my quick spotlight search results?
0
votes
0answers
42 views

Spotlight and all contents on desktop disappeared in OS X

My Spotlight disappeared and I can't find it or get it back. Where is it and how should I make it come back? And when I do, all my folders disapeared from my desktop along with my hard drive. Does ...
1
vote
1answer
56 views

How to show hidden files in Spotlight search results

If I use the search option in the top right corner of the Finder, hidden files do not show up in the search results. Is there any way to change this?
1
vote
1answer
83 views

Can Spotlight be configured to index /System/Library/CoreServices?

With Quicksilver (and other launchers of that type) you can configure it to index applications from places other than /Applications. I often like to launch things from /System/Library/CoreServices ...
0
votes
2answers
88 views

How to enable the Spotlight shortcut in OS X while allowing japanese characters input?

According to this page : http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/cdb_sptfky.html the keyboard shortcut to open the Spotlight menu in OS X is CMD-Space Bar. However, I am using a ...
3
votes
1answer
1k views

Disable Spotlight search in Time Machine backup

I'm running Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and am trying to disable Spotlight indexing on my Time Machine hard drive, as the mds and mdworker processes are running wildly through all day at 15-60% of CPU... What ...
0
votes
1answer
282 views

Recreate Mail.app Search Index?

It seems that the search index for my Mail.app has been corrupted. I have 4 years of emails, but when searching via the built-in search in Mail.app it always returns no results. Anyone have any idea ...
1
vote
2answers
90 views

How do I go straight to the dictionary result for a Spotlight search in OS X?

So when I search in Spotlight, is there a keyboard shortcut to go straight to the Dictionary result?
2
votes
1answer
209 views

Why is Spotlight indexing documents although I disabled documents indexing?

I asked Spotlight not to index Documents, but I keep getting full lists of programming files, like *.c *.h and all kinds of developer files And its not just in one folder, its all over the place, so ...
2
votes
3answers
2k views

How to stop Spotlight indexing a networked Time Machine backup?

My Time Machine backs up to a hard drive connected to my Airport Extreme. After I've upgraded to Lion I have noticed that the mds process (the Spotlight indexer) has been running at 100% cpu every now ...
0
votes
2answers
60 views

How can I drag and drop from Spotlight search results on Mac OS X?

I'd like to hit Cmd-Space, type my query, and then from the list, drag a file to my Desktop or my browser or whatever. The best I have is that with the file highlighted, I can hit Cmd-I and then drag ...
0
votes
1answer
43 views

Search through all files when searching in Finder [closed]

Possible Duplicate: Spotlight and the locate command don't search all folders Is there a way to search through all files from Finder? Currently it only searches "safe" files but I would ...
0
votes
1answer
196 views

OSX - some weblocs open in firefox, some don't - WTF?

I've changed the default app for opening webloc files to firefox (using RCDefaultApp, nice piece of kit, that) and that's all fine, except for one bit of weirdness. If I create a webloc using a script ...
1
vote
1answer
32 views

Spotlight search Application name conflict

The use case where I see this the most is when I want to open the "Spaces" app from Spotlight. I would love to minimize the keys it takes to do this, but because other application exist with similar ...
4
votes
2answers
174 views

How can I do full text searches on files and have a preview?

On Windows XP I used Google Desktop Search which provided full text searches on files and emails with a preview of results, like a Google search. It indexed files when needed. I'm looking for ...
0
votes
1answer
178 views

Spotlight Query Exclude Specific Folder(s)

I want to exclude specific folders from a spotlight query. I do NOT want to exclude them from indexing in general -- I just want to exclude them from my current query. I know how to add exclusion ...
3
votes
2answers
397 views

Initiate a chat in Adium with Spotlight

On Linux I can use gnome-do to quickly initiate a chat in Pidgin with my friends by just typing their IM's usernames in gnome-do's search box then press Enter. Can Spotlight do the same ? I'm open to ...
0
votes
2answers
155 views

Cannot figure out how to search for a file on mac os 10.6

I have mac os 10.6. I want to search for a specific file on my machine. I am looking at it in finder, so I know it exists (foo.txt). I type "foo.txt" into Spotlight, no results. I type "foo.txt" ...
1
vote
2answers
175 views

How do I do advanced searches in Mac OS X?

I don't get it. I just want to do simple searches that work. When I type part of a filename, I want to see all the files that have that part of the filename. I know how to do this in terminal, but it ...
6
votes
3answers
6k views

How can i quit frozen spotlight without rebooting my computer?

I opened up spotlight, typed '12*' to do some multiplication and it's been frozen for the last 20 minutes. I am looking for how to restart the program/service/whatever it technically is, but it's not ...
1
vote
1answer
795 views

Spotlight Infinite Indexing issue (external data drive)

This is an external drive, formerly a boot drive which is now in use only to access music files (sibelius, audio, midi, live, logic etc.) without transferring the data into a new boot system, partly ...
0
votes
3answers
264 views

How to Launch Spotlight from the Terminal

I used this tip top hide my menu bar in a bunch of applications, which is a great way to get more free screen space. The one downside is that (for inexplicable reasons) it disables Spotlight when I'm ...
1
vote
1answer
823 views

Embedded Spotlight does not function in Outlook 2011

I have a rather strange problem. I manage a network of about 35 Mac, and we all recently switched from Mail.app to Outlook 2011 (Please don't debate this, I've already had this conversation ad ...
2
votes
1answer
103 views

How to show in finder from Spotlight?

Often I use Spotlight to find some file, but then I'd like to see where that file is. My natural reaction is to right-click and select "show in Finder", but alas no such thing seems to be possible. Is ...
4
votes
2answers
120 views

How can I open a new Finder window from Spotlight?

Can I open a Finder window from Spotlight? How so?
1
vote
2answers
597 views

Spotlight in Snow Leopard was instantaneous but has gotten slow, I've tried reindexing

When I first started using Snow Leopard, I used spotlight to launch programs. I would type cmd-space and the first few letters of the program (chr to launch Google Chrome, for example). This worked ...
0
votes
2answers
288 views

Reenabling the Spotlight Menubar item in Mac OS X 10.6

I believe I followed the instructions here to disable Spotlight indexing and remove the menubar item. I reenabled indexing just fine, but when I changed the permissions back to 744, the spotlight ...
2
votes
2answers
766 views

How to prevent spotlight from searching external hard drives

I have an external hard drive connected to my Macbook Pro that I always leave on. When I use spotlight to search for something, it always searches this drive. I don't want it to do this because ...
0
votes
2answers
161 views

How can I find all files that are not of a certain kind using Spotlight?

I can enter "Shockwave Flash Movie" in the the search field of a Finder window and find all files that are of Kind, "Shockwave Flash Movie" However, I really want a list of all files that are NOT ...
2
votes
2answers
206 views

Spotlight and the locate command don't search *all* folders

There are several places in Mac OS X, that don't get indexed by spotlight or the terminal locate command. Is there a way to change that? How can I search in places like /private?
1
vote
1answer
98 views

Spotlight searches in Mail.app's Smart folders

Is there a way to use the Spotlight syntax in Mail.app's Smart Folders? I'd like to make advanced boolean searches.
1
vote
1answer
411 views

OS X and Mail Spotlight: Ignoring certain IMAP mail folders

I have my Gmail set up in OS X Mail as IMAP so that my GMail archive is mapped to the trash folder. This has the nice benefit that deleting messages in Mail is the same as archiving them in Gmail. ...
2
votes
1answer
223 views

Configure which spotlight attributes to show in Finder preview?

Is it possible to configure which attributes to show for file in Finder column view? For all files Name, Kind, Size, Created, Modified and Last opened are shown, but for apps there is also Version, ...
1
vote
0answers
366 views

How does Spotlight search regex/other special characters?

I'm trying to find snippets of code in a bunch of velocity files using Spotlight (specifically pages that contain a <html> tag. Spotlight's missing pages that contain that tag that I know are ...
1
vote
1answer
289 views

How to see what files spotlight is currently indexing

Spotlight has been driving me nuts, over working my poor Harddrive so that my whole computer goes to a crawl. (CPU usage is still pretty low, then again I do have a core i7). I saw somewhere that ...
0
votes
2answers
559 views

Google search with OS X spotlight

How can I use Spotlight to show Google search results? The Google Importer is severely out of date, and does not work with 10.6. And, if perhaps this isn't possible, I'd like to know the fastest and ...
3
votes
2answers
210 views

Why isn't OS X Spotlight or Finder finding a file by content that I know exists?

I've got several files in a few folders that I know contain a word, say "foo". I've manually found some of those files, but neither Spotlight or Finder's search is showing those files as matches nor ...
1
vote
2answers
838 views

Mac OS X Spotlight: how to stop it from indexing SD cards

I tried the approach in http://superuser.com/questions/89527/how-do-i-tell-spotlight-not-to-index-a-particular-folder but it still indexes my SD card when I reinsert it into my card reader. How do I ...
1
vote
1answer
336 views

Spotlight Crashing after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6.4

After updating to 10.6.4 spotlight suddenly stopped working in terms of constantly crashing.. I have tried rebuilding the index and I currently have no haxies whatsoever installed on my machine.
0
votes
0answers
162 views

Problems during binding SpotLight to the instance

I have RAC Oracle11 installation built from 2 nodes running on Linux Red Hat OS. Now, I try to make connection from SpotLight running on Windows 7 to the Instance of one of nodes (TNS name of it is: ...
1
vote
3answers
241 views

Content search through source code in finder

I am using OSX 10.6 and want to have content searches in finder for the source code types i use. This suggests a (10.4 only?) solution, but although i have the developer tools installed i don't have ...
2
votes
1answer
394 views

Is there any way to get iphoto metadata (faces, tags) onto the file information?

So faces, places, tags, appear in the jpeg metadata? I want to be able to find them in spotlight, have them if I change programs, etc. If not, does anyone know whether aperture 3 can do this?
2
votes
3answers
1k views

Is it possible to remove JAR files from the application list in Spotlight?

When I'm looking for applications using Spotlight, the top entries are often JAR files. This is annoying. Is it possible to change Spotlight so that JAR files are not considered applications?
2
votes
2answers
170 views

smarter OS X smart folder

Smart folders on OS X are nice and all, but you can only access them from the Finder sidebar, and nowhere else (or am I wrong?). A better way would for them to appear as normal folder in the file ...
5
votes
4answers
1k views

Spotlight has stopped indexing/returning anything in /Applications

After a recent kernel panic & restart, Spotlight no longer seems to know anything about the files under my /Applications folder. I used to launch Safari.app, Opera.app, Textedit.app, etc via ...

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