Using Hidden Features
to Find Files Quickly The Mac's environment of
files, folders, icons, and windows may be known collectively
as the Finder, but when it comes to finding, the real work
is done by Find File, the powerful little search utility
that continues to be refined. When you need to dig up all
the Microsoft Excel spreadsheets you've edited in the last
two weeks, or you want to locate the 27 extra copies of
SimpleText that are scattered around your hard drive, or
you've lost an important file and can remember only that it
contained the word mothball, the Find File command can save
you plenty of time. Tap into Find File's
hidden features, though, and your searches can be even
faster and more informative. When I wrote a column last year
about Find File secrets, I found that the utility had more
undocumented features and hidden shortcuts than I could cram
into a single column (see Secrets, February 1996). For
whatever reason, Apple seems to have planted more juicy
secrets in the Find File utility than in any other system
component. So here's another batch, for fast, efficient file
hunting and gathering. Stay on
Target One of the best ways to
speed up a file search is to narrow its scope by targeting a
specific volume or folder. The topmost pop-up menu in the
Find File window--the one preceded by the words Find
Items--lets you restrict your search to a single volume, but
the little-known secret is that you can switch your search
from one disk to the next without touching the mouse: press
Command-1 to target your start-up disk, press Command-2 to
single out the next volume mounted on your desktop,
Command-3 for the next, and so on. With this keyboard
shortcut, you can quickly navigate up to nine volumes,
targeting only the one you really need for each search. Even
if you include multiple volumes in your search, there's
another way to dramatically speed up the process: hold down
the shift key when you press the Find button. This makes the
Find File program automatically bypass all ejectable disks,
such as Jaz disks and CD-ROMs--even if you have On All Disks
chosen in the Find Items pop-up menu. This shortcut can
reduce search times significantly, because it means Find
File will ignore the 600MB of files on the CD-ROM you happen
to have mounted. Remember, too, that you
can narrow a search to even less than one volume. If you
have a hunch that a file might be hiding within a particular
folder, select that folder and drag it onto the Find Items
pop-up menu. The menu changes to In The Finder Selection.
Find File then focuses its search on only the folder you've
specified. (You can also do this with multiple folders; just
drag the folders you want to search en masse onto the Find
Items pop-up menu.) Faster Content
Searches Find File's most powerful
feature is its ability to search by content, but for some
reason Apple chose to hide this feature. You have to hold
down the option key while choosing the Name pop-up menu to
reveal four secret criteria: contents, name/icon lock
status, custom icon, and visibility. When you search by
contents, Find File pokes into every file, searching for a
text string you specify. It's powerful, but terribly slow.
If you speak and write in English, however, there's a way to
make those interminable content searches go much faster:
press the option key when you click on the Find button. That
triggers a fast ASCII search--looking only for standard
English-alphabet characters. Find and
Print Once you've found the
items you're looking for using Find File, you can open,
copy, alias, or trash files from within the Items Found
window--but did you know you can also print them directly
from the Find File program? In the Items Found window,
select the name of the file you want to print, then press
Command-P. Find File automatically launches the appropriate
program, opens the file, and summons the Print dialog box.
Simply pressing return sends your job to the printer, closes
the file, and quits the application. Holding down the option
key while choosing the Print Item command prints your file
and quits Find File in the process. Get More Info--or
Less Once you set Find File
loose on a search, it chugs away at the task without giving
you much feedback--until it produces a list of matches in
the Items Found window. If you'd like a peek at what Find
File is up to while it conducts a search, hold down the
Command key when you click on the Find button (or just press
Command-return). A status bar appears at the bottom of the
Find File window, showing the name of the volume currently
being searched and the name of the last item successfully
found. The benefit? If the name of the item you are looking
for happens to flash by, you can interrupt the search
immediately using Command-period and retrieve the file in
the Items Found window. One last tip: Find File
allows you to search by up to ten different criteria; every
time you click on the More Choices button (or press
Command-M), an additional search criterion appears. But
suppose you decide, after adding several lines of search
criteria, that you want to return Find File to its default
state--searching by just a single attribute. It turns out
there are three different ways to do it in just one step.
Shift-click on the Fewer Choices button or press
Command-shift-R, and all your extra choices disappear.
Shift-option-drag moves the whole block of additional
attributes to the Trash; remove a single search criterion
from the middle of the pack by holding down the option key
to drag a single row to the Trash. One Key, Many
Options The option key unlocks a
world of secret features in Find File Just about every
button, command, and pop-up menu in the Find File utility
gains added power used in conjunction with the option
key. Here are some
examples: NOTE: The information in this
article came from an Internet download but without specific
details. I will keep an eye out for the original souce
inrder to give proper credit to the author(s).
on Your Hard Disc