Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com.
Let me show you how to search for files on your Mac.
I'm using Mac OS 10.9.
I'm going to show you how to search in the Finder.
Let's start by creating a new Finder window.
In a new Finder window you've got a search bar here to the right.
You can use that to start a search.
There are many different ways and this is one of them.
When you type you get a file name with a name that matches test.
So you can decide right away whether or not you want to search for this term inside the
file contents, which is what it is doing now, or you want to focus on searching by name.
So now it is just going to search for files with that name.
You can also set where it is searching.
This Mac or just in the Documents folder which was the folder which was in this window before
I started the search.
So now notice the name is selectable here and I can change it back to everything if
I want.
But the biggest way to kind of customize this is to use the Plus button here on the right.
You can do that and now you can add different things here.
I can say just show text documents and I can select the type of text document.
I can go and say let's just look at images and I can select the type of image.
So you can do a lot here with Kind.
But you can also do other things.
Last opened date; Last modified date; all sorts of things.
You can select Other and then select from a ton of different things.
I mean you've got things like the Exposure time for images for instance.
All sorts of stuff in here that you can use to further customized the search.
You can add more things.
So for instance I can add Plus here and I can say Kind is image and I can also say the
last opened date is within the last thirty days to get results for that.
I can add as many of these things as I want.
In addition I can also use the Option key.
You can see it also changes the Plus to dot-dot-dot.
I do that and now it is basically going to create something underneath here.
It is going to look for if any of these are true, or all of these are true, or none of
these are true.
So I can go and say well if the last modified date is within the last thirty days and I
want to add here or if the created date is in the last year, the created date is this
year.
So it will just check if either of these are true.
I can say remove this one.
So I can look for any image where either of these two things are true.
I can continue to add more of these types of search criteria.
I can easily remove them as well.
So you can get really complex with your searches.
Once you've got these set you can actually go in and remove this criteria here.
If you hit this X it cancels the entire search.
But if you select in here and remove you will be able to, very quickly now, not have it
search for any name or content but look for basically the kind of image and these date
criteria here to give you some results.
For quick searches you can type in here and tell it what you want.
So I can do name:test and it will automatically figure out I want name matches test.
So I don't have to actually select that there.
I can just use the keyboard if I want to.
Also, of course, it is much quicker in many cases to search using the Spotlight menu up
here and you can do that and then quickly hit Show All in Finder.
It will actually open up a Finder window with that result there.
So it is just a quicker way than creating a Finder window.
You can start here instead and use that Show All in Finder window.
So you probably have noticed the Save button here when you do searches.
What that does is it creates a Smart Folder.
A Smart Folder is basically a saved search.
So I can save this to the, it will automatically go to the Saved Searches in your library.
Where that will appear is in the left under Favorites.
So you've got a quick way to return to the search.
The cool thing about Smart Folders is that they are always going to update with the latest
content.
You can also create Smart Folders by going, in the Finder, to New Smart Folder.
It basically opens up a new search window where you can type the criteria there and
it is automatically saving it as a Smart Folder.
You don't have to do the extra step.
Let's create a new file here under Home Docs.
I'm going to duplicate this in My Document folder and rename it My Document Test.
Now sometimes it takes a minute for it to update.
If we go to the Smart Folder here we can see it has that new document in it.
So it is kind of a way to create a complex search, save that here into Favorites, or
you can save it anywhere.
Like I put one here on the Desktop.
You will basically be able to repeat that search by looking in that folder and seeing
what has changed that now meets that criteria.