Turtlewiz

Q: Can I later change or add information used by Spotlight Search?

In both MS Office and Adobe, whenever I do a "Save As" or make a PDF of something via the print menu, a box appears and asks me for the title, keywords, author, etc.  The boxes are slightly different in Office and Adobe, but I assume that this is a function of the OS X Finder and is used by Finder in searches.

 

I often realize later on that I want to add or change something in one of these boxes, but I don't know where to find them to do that. Does anyone know?  Thanks!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5), 13" early 2015

Posted on Jul 6, 2016 8:25 AM

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Q: Can I later change or add information used by Spotlight Search?

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  • by Barney-15E,Apple recommended

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Jul 9, 2016 9:45 AM in response to Turtlewiz
    Level 8 (49,742 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 9, 2016 9:45 AM in response to Turtlewiz

    but I assume that this is a function of the OS X Finder and is used by Finder in searches.

     

    I often realize later on that I want to add or change something in one of these boxes, but I don't know where to find them to do that. Does anyone know?  Thanks!

    That metadata is stored by the programs themselves. The programs may write some of them to Finder's metadata which Spotlight will search--Office 2016 does. I don't know if Office uses the Finder metadata to populate that Properties window, or if it stores it separately, but writes the data to the Finder metadata.

     

    For Office documents, try File menu, Properties. That may be different for other versions of Office. It is probably something similar for Adobe's docs.

  • by Turtlewiz,

    Turtlewiz Turtlewiz Jul 9, 2016 9:58 AM in response to Turtlewiz
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 9, 2016 9:58 AM in response to Turtlewiz

    Thanks--I never noticed "Properties." The term is the same in on document file menus in both Word (Office 2008 Mac) and Adobe. I experimented by creating a Properties menu for an Adobe document I saved as a PDF recently, and when I went back to the File menu and selected Properties, I saw that the program had retained information I entered.

     

    The only thing I can't figure out now is whether these programs store a document's Properties info somewhere.  If so, that must also vary with each program.  Would you know what term to use to search for wherever the documents Properties box is stored, for instance, if I want to add a keyword?  If the only way to access Properties is to select that on the File menu, it looks like the whole box has to be rewritten again to change or add something.  But in that case, is the old data retained somewhere (which would probably make a search more complicated, since there would be 2 sets of data), or would it simply be replaced by the new box? 

     

    This seems to be a more elaborate version of the same question as before, so if it seems unanswerable, feel free to ignore it--and thanks for your help already!

  • by Barney-15E,

    Barney-15E Barney-15E Jul 9, 2016 10:35 AM in response to Turtlewiz
    Level 8 (49,742 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 9, 2016 10:35 AM in response to Turtlewiz

    The whole thing does not need to be rewritten. You can edit any of the details. I haven't used 2008 in years, but I don't remember it being any different.

     

    The data would be stored inside the file, or attached as metadata as is done in the Finder.

    You can view Finder's metadata with the mdls command in Terminal, but editing it there is a bit complicated.

  • by VikingOSX,

    VikingOSX VikingOSX Jul 9, 2016 11:45 AM in response to Turtlewiz
    Level 7 (20,606 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jul 9, 2016 11:45 AM in response to Turtlewiz

    In the OS X App Store, there is a free application named PDF Attributes, that permits changes to existing PDF metadata fields.