Chapter 6

Searching Amidst MacBook Chaos

IN THIS CHAPTER

Bullet Mastering basic Spotlight searching skills

Bullet Selecting text and keywords for best results

Bullet Displaying results in the Finder search window

Bullet Customizing Spotlight within System Settings

What would you say if I told you that you could search your entire system for all the data connected with a person — and in only the short time it takes to type that person’s name? And I’m not just talking about files and folders that might include that person’s name. I mean every email message and every Calendar event that references that person — and even that person’s Contacts card, to boot. Heck, how about if that search could dig up every occurrence of the person’s name inside your PDF documents? What if it could even search folders shared on other Macs across your network?

You’d probably say, “That makes for good future tech. I’ll bet I can do that in five or ten years. It’ll take Apple at least that long to do it — and just in time for me to buy a new MacBook! (Harrumph.)”

Don’t be so hasty. You can do all this right now. (In fact, this functionality ...

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