Comments on: Finding Those Pesky Preference Files

By: rockmsockm

rockmsockm — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:30:47 +0000

I agree wholeheartedly, Aj. That’s the point of the “trick” posted here: I posted it to “circumvent” the rather annoying issues that have come to light with the new version of Spotlight. Many people in Apple’s support forums have been asking “what happened to my preference files,” so this was one way of “band-aiding” that.

I wonder if some of the Spotlight complaints have made their way into the many fixes coming in 10.5.2?

By: AjPID

AjPID — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:32:09 +0000

I totally agree with the posters who prefer to have Search left as it was. If I am an Admin level account on the Mac, I don’t want to have to jump through hoops to search for things. The idea of having to specify the specific folder to search in kind of misses the point of search in the first place. I may be giving Google Desktop search a look as well. This is going backwards in my opinion. If Apple wants to have search perform this way under Standard accounts, fine, but not Admin accounts.

By: mikeb

mikeb — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:09:30 +0000

I hate this “feature” in Leopard’s Spotlight. I just switched to using Google Desktop for Mac.
http://desktop.google.com/mac/

By: Martink

Martink — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:51:11 +0000

I just answered part of my own question. Here is a helpful article with much of what I asked for :
http://www.mcelhearn.com/article.php?story=20071114093450231

Not a quick reference chart but it helps

By: Martink

Martink — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 23:47:34 +0000

I am new to Mac and keep seeing references to to search for specific types of files. ie Kind: and puting “” around to find exact phrases etc. Is there a reference page with all of these things in one place?

Thanks

By: Nillio

Nillio — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:54:04 +0000

@ rocksockm: you’re probably right there, but IMO that’s why we have guest accounts. as administrator i don’t want to be limited by default when i search under Leopard.
Suppose someone misses a file on his mac, and doesn’t know here he (accidentally) put it, how can you know for sure that file is gone? This feels like step backwards for Spotlight…..

By: Marty

Marty — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 22:59:48 +0000

Ah! Is there any way to default the searches for File Names and not Content?

-Thx!

By: rockmsockm

rockmsockm — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 18:22:51 +0000

Guy: I understand where you’re coming from, that’s initially how I felt–but Leopard DOES find every file, don’t worry. And, whizzkid’s alternative method of using the search criteria shows you can indeed find just about any file from anywhere on your mac

However, I agree that the bigger question is why you just can’t do this without having to do ANYTHING, like we did in Panther! perhaps Apple feels that system files are too “dangerous” to find right off the bat for your average user? lol

By: guy

guy — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 18:18:19 +0000

Maybe I’m missing something here, but it seems like having to know where a file is located (being in the prefs folder) to search for something seems like a weird way of going about things.

The questions here is why doesn’t Leopard find any file, anywhere if you have a portion of the name typed into search field? Previous versions of OS X did so.

By: rockmsockm

rockmsockm — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 18:07:17 +0000

Whizz–thanks for that info! lol I personally prefer the above method to using the pulldown to go to “other” (“system files” is not initially selectable), and selecting your search item criteria. Yes, I know, I know, I’m splitting hairs… lol

While I like this method, everyone should do what’s quickest for them! I’ll add your nugget to the post.