Mac OS® X Leopard™ All‐in‐One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 4. Searching Everything with Spotlight

In This Chapter

• Mastering basic Spotlight searching skills

• Selecting text and keywords for best results

• Displaying results in the Spotlight window

• Customizing Spotlight settings in System Preferences

Spotlight is Apple's desktop search technology that you can use to find anything on your computer as quickly as you can type. (Yep, that includes all the documents, Address Book contacts, Mail messages, folders, and drives that your Mac can access.) In fact, the new version of Spotlight included with Leopard can even search other Macs across your network! Yes, you read right: For the first time, if the information is on a Mac's hard drive, a CD, your network, or even another Mac in your network, consider it located.

This chapter is your ticket to using this new search technology like a professional techno‐wizard from day one. I discuss how Spotlight works and how you can use it to locate exactly what you want (and present those results, like a wine steward shows off a fine vintage).

Basic Searching 101

Figure 4-1 illustrates the Spotlight search field, which is always available from the Finder menu bar. Click the magnifying glass icon once, and the Spotlight search box appears.

Figure 4.1.  Figure 4-1: A lot of power is behind this single Spotlight search box.

To run a search, simply click in the Spotlight box and begin typing. You see matching items ...