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Why is "Search" so bad in Finder?

Mikebike125

Mikebike125

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 25, 2007
409
17
I just am wondering why the search feature in Finder is so bad. Here is my situation. I know I have a PDF manual for my Honda Accord on my computer but I forgot where it was. I put in the word "Accord" in the search bar and a million things came up that could not have possibly been related to the word "Accord". Why is this? I am just completely confused as to why loads of other things show up that have nothing to to with "Accord". It is almost like it just not worth it to use the search. Am I doing something wrong?
 
Mikebike125 said:
I just am wondering why the search feature in Finder is so bad. Here is my situation. I know I have a PDF manual for my Honda Accord on my computer but I forgot where it was. I put in the word "Accord" in the search bar and a million things came up that could not have possibly been related to the word "Accord". Why is this? I am just completely confused as to why loads of other things show up that have nothing to to with "Accord". It is almost like it just not worth it to use the search. Am I doing something wrong?
Click to expand...
Perhaps Spotlight also found "according". Spotlight throws a wide net when it searches without more detailed instructions.
 
If you don't mind spending some money, look into HoudahSpot. I've used it for several years and it's a fantastic utility. It uses Spotlight's index, but gives you many search options. In your case, you could tell it to search PDFs only.

It's hard for me to imagine life without it.
 
Is is possible the pdf manual doesn't have "accord" in its file name?

Also, PDFs can be of the not-indexed variety. I've had PDFs that were text based that, when open, couldn't be searched for any word at all. There are a few ways to fix that, I think, but at some point I figured out that uploading a PDF to Google Drive would somehow make it searchable.
 
Use mdfind #name-of-the-file# from Terminal then. (mdfind Accord)
Or -- use Tags, without gripes on Spotlight
Or -- open possible folders and sort them by file category, and using space button and up/down arrows you can quickly analyse/check pdf files to locate that needed one
 
Over the years I discovered Spotlight uses hidden files for searches to all networks connect to, even remote shares to scan them! I keep have to stop it from getting outside the Mac even on my new M1 when I connected to my old work network! I've grown to hate Spotlight through the years it been use especially on networks!
 
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Mike,
Sorry, I'm late to the party...but what you're trying to do is easy with Mac's Finder. To illustrate, I renamed a .pdf on my hard drive so it contains the word 'Accord' and set the parameters in Finder's Search to look just for pdf's containing the word accord:

Screenshot 2022-12-31 at 9.59.27 AM.png
 
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T'hain Esh Kelch said:
Spotlight also searches inside documents, so those that contain 'Accord' inside, or those with 'accord' in their meta data, will also come up. You can write "name:Accord" instead to filter directly.
Click to expand...

Spotlight is bane for network Administrators! When ever an Administrator complained Macs were to talkie Spotlight was the culprit! Uncheck it will try to scan every network stack in system lll the time at any stage! That's why Spotlight was turned OFF in any Mac in our system, even the boss computer
 
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