Edit long list of saved search criteria

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Level 1

49 points

Edit long list of saved search criteria

Hello folks,

I've got a question regarding saved searches in Finder!

I've created a couple of years back a saved search filter in Finder. It searches for specific strings of text in PDF documents. Over the years the filter (saved search) grew bigger and bigger and I saw I can't go back or forward in deleting the old search criteria. In the GUI, in Finder, I can't scroll in the criteria pane (Show search criteria). I attached a few pictures (apparently macOS can't do a snapshot of the saved searches windows).

Having said that I tried to enter the terminal or a text editor to try to modify the saved search filter manually as there was no apparent way to do it via the GUI. So I looked for a text string, and searched for it in the text editor. It was found in three places. However even if I delete all three entries, it still appears in the GUI window.

So is there any way of modifying this filter? I can attach the filter if anyone is interested.

Thank you!

Posted on Jun 24, 2020 5:14 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,138 points

Jun 24, 2020 3:22 PM in response to AndreiD

I was able to edit the XML in BBEdit.

Each criteria is in a <dict></dict> element with a <key>Criteria</key>

Find the items you want to remove and select the entire <dict> </dict> entry and delete.

Once you have edited and saved, you have to relaunch Finder (or log out and back in).

That's the only way I could figure out how to do it since it won't scroll the criteria list.

Here is an example of the "Any" group (com_apple_CompoundSliceAny) with one individual criteria highlighted.

You can probably use any text editor, but BBEdit is free to use in its basic mode and it can open a lot of things that other programs will scoff at.

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Answer 2

AndreiD Author

Level 1

49 points

Jul 1, 2020 6:17 AM in response to Barney-15E

Hi,

Thank you so much! This solved it!

I did the same steps except I didn't think to relaunch Finder. Anyway, thanks for the feedback and I will go ahead and report this issue to Apple since this is clear a Finder bug (the non-scrolling window)

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Edit long list of saved search criteria

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