STEP ELEVEN (Sorting Your Results)

Alright, by now you're getting pretty good at searching. You know how to use the results to find just what you're looking for (thanks to them being categorized and with help from the photo, movie, and audio previews), and you even know how to open the documents Spotlight finds. But did you know that you can tweak how the results are displayed to make finding things easier for you, based on what you're looking for, and how you think? For example, let's look at the main Spotlight window (the separate window you get when you click on Show All). By default, all the results are grouped by the kind of document they are (so all the email results appear grouped in one section, all the photos in another, etc.). In the top-right corner of the Spotlight window (just under the Search field), there's a list named "Group By," and you can see the word "Kind" is blue. If you're not exactly sure of the name of the file, but you think you remember when you created it, try grouping by Date, or go down a little further on the right side of Spotlight and try some of the choices under When. If you know approximately when you created the file, it can really help you zero-in on where that file is, even if you don't know the full name of the file. For example, let's say you created a file earlier this month, and you think part of the name might include the word "vacation." Just search for the word "vacation," and when the results appear in the main Spotlight window, go to the When list on the right side and click on This Month. Now only the documents you created this month will be visible, helping you narrow the search even more. This is pretty handy stuff.