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excalibur313

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 7, 2003
780
5
Cambridge, MA
So I was curious how you can keep spotlight from coming up with results from a particular file. Now I know that you can drag that folder into the privacy box in the system preferences but I want more. I just don't want anyone who knows os x to be able to go in and find all the folders that I decide to hide and then open them. No, I would like some flag I can set on the folder itself so that it just won't show up. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Stephen
 

emw

macrumors G4
Aug 2, 2004
11,172
0
I'm not at my Tiger Mac right now, so I'm guessing a little bit, but can't you simply lock the System Preferences so that they'd need an admin password to change your spotlight settings?

Besides, if they can know where to add it in spotlight, couldn't they just look for it manually?

If you really want to hide something, create a password-protect disk image using Disk Utility and store your stuff there. I don't think spotlight will search the contents of an unmounted image (especially if it's on the privacy list) and no one would be able to mount it without a password.
 

quackattack

macrumors 6502a
Aug 13, 2004
571
0
Boise, ID
I would put all of my uhem... sensitive files in an encrypted .dmg file. Spotlight can't find them in there!

You can make one with disk utility.
 

excalibur313

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 7, 2003
780
5
Cambridge, MA
What I'm trying to do is hide a bunch of pdf that are of a sensitive nature. I use them though so putting them in dmg is kind of a pain.
 

emw

macrumors G4
Aug 2, 2004
11,172
0
excalibur313 said:
What I'm trying to do is hide a bunch of pdf that are of a sensitive nature. I use them though so putting them in dmg is kind of a pain.
.dmg is probably your best bet in this scenario, though. Just place it in your Dock to open it when you need it.
 

excalibur313

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 7, 2003
780
5
Cambridge, MA
Just out of curiosity when I get info now on either a folder or a file there is this new tab called spotlight comments. What exactly is this?
 

whooleytoo

macrumors 604
Aug 2, 2002
6,607
716
Cork, Ireland.
excalibur313 said:
Just out of curiosity when I get info now on either a folder or a file there is this new tab called spotlight comments. What exactly is this?

I believe you can attach comments to any file, and then search for these via Spotlight.
 
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