Can I customize "all my files" and exclude folders?

Yes. Right click on "all my folders" and you can edit the search criteria.

I don't think this is correct. "All my FILES" is not editable. You don't have an option to "show search criteria."

Note it's easy to set up your own smart search.

Apple needs to give us the option of selecting the file kinds we want to show up in "All My Files".

For example , I don't really care to see all the developer files!

I don't think you can do that,but you can choose how it group them so if you choose date las opened or modified you can get first the folders/files you more use may better way group them than just allow you to choose whichs you want display.

The "All My Files" search seems to respect the privacy settings in Spotlight. So you can add a folder to the Privacy list there and it will no longer show up in "All My Files". But, of course, it also will no longer be part of Spotligh searches either.

sorry but where is spotlight in Lion ? I do not see it.

If you you right click sometimes you get the show info but other times it shows search critieria.

Installing office 2011 appears to make it add an additional criteria

I have documents and .com.microsoft and this causes it to be filled up with email messages I dont want to see.

change the search criteria and save it and an additional sidebar item called all my files. save search appears and works but all my files is back to the way it was before.

Would love to get rid of that microsoft addition somehow

Dawsonj,

I was experiencing the same problem with Microsoft Office results flooding my "All My Files" view – but was able to fix it using redisant's suggestion above, by customizing my Spotlight preferences.

Step-by-step:

1. Open "System Preferences..." in the Apple menu.
2. Click the "Spotlight" Icon to open Spotlight Preferences.
3. Change from the "Search Results" tab to the "Privacy" tab. This pane lets you specify folders that should be excluded from Spotlight search (and also from "All My Files").
4. Click the "+" button in the lower left to add a new list item.
5. Navigate to your "Microsoft User Data" folder (by default, this is <user>/Documents/Microsoft User Data) and select to add it to the list of excluded directories. (You can also navigate to the folder in the finder, and then drag the folder directly into the list view.)

That's it!

"All My Files" should be sane again. :-)

Best,
Jason

Hello putting Microsoft User Data in Privacy settings is a nice try and I have tried this previously.

What is wrong with this approach is that in Outlook you lose all search for emails.

Thus, searching for emails in Outlook leads to zero results as it uses Spotlight too.

In fact any change using spotlight preferences becomes global and wrecks searching and other things across all apps.

The only real answer is for apple to add some flexibility to how all my files works.

In the mean time I have hidden it and created my own search folder: