In Spotlight, for a very long time, I have encountered this:
+ I type a word or two in the Spotlight field, I get some results
+ I want to see where the files are in the file system so I click “Show All in Finder”
+ I get a big “Show All in Finder” icon, then I click that
? Why do I have to click it twice? What kind of OS requires 2 clicks for the same thing?
+ When I click the 2nd time, I get a MUCH larger list of files
? Why does the file list change when I have only changed my view option? (all in finder)
+ Also I get 95% seemingly unrelated files in the 2nd view
Thanks, Paul
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Paul Schwotzer
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How Do I Use Spotlight’s Show All In Finder?
Comments: 2 Responses to “How Do I Use Spotlight’s Show All In Finder?”
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Instead of clicking, press Return when Show All in Finder is selected. Then it goes right there. I guess the first click is to select, and the second is to "use" that option. You can also just double-click the Show All in Finder instead of one click on the item and the other on the large icon.
This takes you then to the Finder and shows you the results of a Finder search for the same term. The Spotlight search is for many things: emails, contacts, web pages, documents, apps, etc. So you get a short selection of each. The Finder search is just for files, so you see all of those. You can always use the search box in the Finder to skip Spotlight and go right to a Finder search if that is what you want. Command+F if you are already in the Finder.
Not sure what you mean by unrelated files. All of the files will be related in some way to the search term. Perhaps you want to only search for file names instead of contents? In that case, use name:searchterm to search in the Finder, or type the search term and then click the "Name matches" that appears under it.
Press the Command key to find out where it is stored. Press Command plus the R key to go to the document.