[X4U] Re: Searching for file name in Tiger

[George Harvey]

Many of the helpful comments on this thread offer practical help when  
trying to use Spotlight. However, Spotlight has not been finished as  
a working search device. It has several design flaws, some of which  
could be eliminated with simple measures such as by requiring a  
return before search begins.

I have many thousands of files to work with every day, and do many  
searches in order to correlate information. If there is a delay of  
many seconds in the find, this adds up to a lot of total waiting time  
each day. Spotlight uses a good indexing system that is fairly  
trouble free, but needs improving. It has the best potential of any  
available system for the individual user, but needs some upgrading. I  
don't know whether Apple is working on this or not, but it is one of  
the most important advantages to the OS, and should be fixed as  
quickly as possible.

Spotlight is lightning fast on my G5 when I write the search term,  
copy it and paste it in the Find window after selecting specific hard  
drives, kinds, dates, etc. if the drive is a small one. But for  
searching multiple drives Spotlight is a great time waster. It often  
starts a search when the kind is selected instead of waiting for the  
search string to be entered. It also starts searching as soon as one  
character is typed, and finds so many of the wrong file that it takes  
a while to start over as the the next character is typed. Eventually,  
it usually finds the string, but many times, it cannot find files  
that I know are present, and have just been working on. EasyFind is  
excellent, but cannot begin to match Spotlight's speed because it  
does not use indexing. I use it on specific folders. Nearly every  
day, I boot a hard drive with OS X 10.3.9 so I can find files  
Spotlight cannot find. This is the most reliable way I have found to  
avoid wasting time with Spotlight, and to really find files not  
brought up by Spotlight.

George Harvey



> On Aug 16, 2005, at 7:04 AM, Jim Hurley wrote:
>
>>> After typing Command-F in the Finder, select the Kind pop-up and
>>> change it
>>> to Name. You can then choose Contains, Begins With, Ends With, or
>>> Is. Once
>>> you start typing in the box, it will start giving results. And if
>>> your word
>>> is more than a few characters long, you'll probably get the spinning
>>> beachball halfway through typing...
>>>
>>> AFAIK, this is the only way to do a name search in Tiger (aside
>>> from using
>>> locate in the Terminal) and you will have to change the Kind field
>>> to Name
>>> every single time.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Thanks to all for their response my quest for a pre-Tiger file
>> search method.
>>
>> Thanks especially to Eddie--above. That solves my problem; not
>> quite as easy as pre-Tiger, but it will do the job.
>>
>> I am mentality stuck back in OS 9 so I  always keep a couple of
>> finder widows open on the desktop for ready  access to folders. To
>> preserve these and do a file-find, it is necessary to first create
>> a new Finder window and then do as Eddie suggests. So the routine
>> becomes command-N, command-F, and change the Kind to Name. Room for
>> a third-party app here?
>>
>> Jim
>>
>
>
> For those who don't grok Spotlight, there's always EasyFind--it free
> and works fine in 10.4.
> <http://tinyurl.com/77byo>
>
> As for having to create a new Finder window, it's not necessary. Just
> type the search term in any Finder search box and when you've found
> what you want, delete the search term and your original window is  
> back.
> ciao,
> Vince
>
>