Mac 101: Spotlight
Summary
Your computer may be the center of your world, holding vast amounts of applications and files from last family get-together, to school homework, to your work presentation. So when you need to find something fast and easy, instead of turning to the Finder you can use Spotlight, a new search technology built into Mac OS X.
Products Affected
Spotlight
Not only will Spotlight start finding files the minute you start typing in the Spotlight search field, it'll display files, folders, and applications whose names match your search criteria, as well as files that contain your criteria within them, such as in text documents, applications, emails, calendars, and more. In other words, if you type .m4p to search for all song files you bought from the iTunes Store, Spotlight will locate all files that have this extension, as well as documents that contain the text ".m4p" in them. Here's how to use Spotlight to find what you need.
You can access Spotlight from its menu bar icon or in any Finder window.
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Spotlight is available system-wide. To access it, click the Spotlight icon in the upper-right corner of your screen (or use Command + Space Bar) and type what you're looking for in the resulting field, or type your search criteria in the search field in any Finder, System Preferences, or application window that supports it. For example, you can type .jpg if you want to find all JPEG images on your Mac, or type a friend's email address and a couple keywords to locate a particular email from your friend about the subject matter you specified.
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The moment you start typing, Spotlight begins to show you what it's found, organizing your results by category (including Documents, Images, and PDF Documents). The more you type, the more refined your results will be.
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If you're using a Finder window, you can click one of the buttons below the window toolbar to tell Spotlight where to search. For example, click Computer to search everywhere on your Mac, or click Home to have Spotlight just search everything in your Home folder.
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If there are a lot of results, Spotlight won't display everything in the menu or window. If you want to see everything, choose Show All if you're using the Spotlight menu, or click the "more..." link in a Finder window.
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To open an item in the results list, just select it if you're viewing the Spotlight menu, or double-click the item if you're looking at results in a Finder window.
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