Using the "find" function

Question

Using the "find" function

For some reason, using 'find' is very different in this version. When I do a find, I quite often want to sort by file size, yet for some strange reason it is grayed out when I go to "arrange by" size. I would love to know how to fix this! 🙂

Thanks!

MacBook Pro 2.66 i7 "17 inch, Mac OS X (10.6.4), 4 gb ram

Posted on Dec 9, 2010 11:07 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

nachdenki

Level 3

649 points

Dec 10, 2010 12:04 AM in response to Anthony Vamvakitis1

you need to be much clearer when creating posts, please.
do you mean the search function of the finder? the spotlight icon in the top right? what is "this version"? The current OS X version 10.6.5? compared to which version? 10.6.4?

If you mean the finder search, than that is strange, I can sort by file size without any problems by right-clicking in the results window and selecting arrange by -> size. is this grayed out for you?

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Answer 2

Dec 10, 2010 12:24 PM in response to Anthony Vamvakitis1

The ability to sort by size went away in Leopard, evidently Apple intended to add it back in Snow Leopard, but it is buggy, and thus it was not enabled. You can turn it on yourself with the instructions here:

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2009083113534843

You might want to take a look at the article I wrote on Spotlight for Leopard:

http://www.pinkmutant.com/articles/Leopard/leospot.html

Snow Leopard is basically the same. I have included a few parenthetical remarks about differences.
Francine

Francine
Schwieder

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Answer 3

Dec 10, 2010 12:46 PM in response to Francine Schwieder

Thank you, Francine. I appreciate the response and the links, although I find it shocking that this is a part of Apple's new reality. As an editor, I'm constantly using the size column to weed out large files that I've got stored all over the drive. To not be able to include this in a functional way should be embarrassing for them! 🙂

I enjoyed your article, too. You covered it all very well there. I will try the hack...after I have finished my current project!

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Answer 4

Dec 10, 2010 12:51 PM in response to nachdenki

I'm sorry you didn't understand. I thought I was very clear. I was talking about "find" or command-f as you might recognize it. Anyway, my question is answered. Thank you for trying.

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