Change default search criteria in Finder

Are you talking about the results of a Spotlight search?

All you need to do is click on the Other box and change from Other to select Any or whatever category (any, application, archive, document executables, folder, image, movie, music, pdf, presentation, or text) you wish like this:

When you select a different category than Other, the box that shows the "com.microsoft" in the example above will disappear. Some of the choices will show an additional list box in order to specify more control over what is displayed. For example if you choose Image you get another list box that will have choices for JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG and BMP. Play around with the type box to see what other choices it will allow you to make.

Good luck...

At the time of OS install, none of these options were there.

What makes you think so?

I have them too.

Here:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/MyLibraries/myDocumen ts.cannedSearch/Resources/search.savedSearch

What specifically are you trying to find in Finder? Are you looking for Word documents? Other document types? What is selected in your System Preferences : Spotlight : Search Results?

You can find those by typing kind:word in the Finder window search box, or in Spotlight?

I find whatever I want without touching any .plist.

You can't change the default Search Criteria without hacking the OS. However, you can create a Smart Folder or Folders in the Finder and set you search criteria as needed. Save the Smart Folder to Saved Searches in your User Library (by clicking the Save Button to the right side in the Finder window) and it should appear in the Finder sidebar under Favorites. You can create different searches for different purposes if needed.

I doubt that anyone will be able to tell you how to change that default setting of the OS. Even if they would, it will not yield any different results that the Smart Search Folder will revel.

If you feel you have been hacked, you might post a question on that subject and explain your details on why you feel that way. Many people are knowledgable on this and will be happy to help.

OK, I see. It should be defaulting to "Kind" is "Any", not "Other". I understand your problem now.

If I had to take a guess, it would be the com.apple.finder.plist file, but not 100% sure. The path to that folder/file is:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

If you wish to try, move that file and any other com.apple.finder.*** files in the Preferences folder of your user library to the trash, but do not empty. Restart the computer and test. Your finder will be set back to defaults. If it doesn't work, select the files in the trash and right click and choose put back, or manually drag them back to the preferences folder to replace the new ones and restart the computer.

If you wish to verify that the problem is with a corrupt file in your user folder before doing anything else, create a new user account to test with. Log into that user account and see if the Finder search criteria is correct. If yes, then it is definitely a file within your user account.

If it remains incorrect in the new user account, then there is a problem in the main OS itself and the above advise will not help. You may have to reinstall the OS to correct it if someone else can't tell you how to correct it.

Not sure if this is worth a try but the following are files/folders that I've found that have something to do with storing Finder data, you could back them up, then delete them and restart your machine to see if Finder then Resets.

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.finder

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

~/Library/SyncedPreferences/com.apple.finder.plist

~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.finder.savedState

~/Library/Saved Searches

There might be others but haven't found them on my system yet.

ps looks like Glenn go there before me.

When I select "show search criteria" it seems that it has defaulted to Kind is Other "com.microsoft."

It's been like that for a very long time now (I'm also seeing it in Yosemite, but haven't looked further back), but "com.microsoft." is just one criteria and since "Any" is selected, not "All", it's just an addition, not an exclusion.

I'm certain there's a plist somewhere that has this information, but haven't found it so far.

There are certain underlying settings that can be changed in Terminal using the 'defaults' command. A very common 'finder'-related usage, for example, is to permanently show all hidden files (like CMD-SHIFT-dot but stays that way) with the Terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles true

This tells 'defaults' to write to the preferences related to a domain called 'com.apple.Finder'. It looks for a key called 'AppleShowAllFiles' and sets it to 'true'. ('YES' is shown in some examples. It means the same thing.)

Note: if you're going to use this command, make sure to follow it with the command 'killall Finder'. This re-launches Finder to make the change take effect.

I'm sure that someone at Microsoft has figured out which `defaults` item(s) must be added or changed to set that `kind` value. However, I've not been able to find it so far, and it seems not to be publicly documented anywhere.

Side comment: this isn't a hack at all. It's an advanced feature of the OS that is used by many apps and super users. Whoever caused this at Microsoft may not even realize they were affecting all of Finder with the command they used - or they might have done it on purpose, but did it with full intent of making your Microsoft stuff easier to find.

Either way, if I find an answer before this post expires, I'll definitely post it!

I had already pointed out the location.

The OP went to the folder "All My Files" and then brought up the search criteria. "All My Files" is a canned search, built into Finder.app itself (see my posts earlier, which include the exact path and the com.microsoft.* criteria). Nothing Microsoft has done.

By the way, if you want to look at "Recents" in High Sierra, which has replaced "All My Files", you will find the saved search (with a raw query this time) at this path (put it into the Finder's "Go > Go to Folder..." menu, as the path will show different names in Finder itself - "Recents.cannedSearch" and won't allow opening the packet file with a simple right click):

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/MyLibraries/myDocuments.cannedSearch/Resources/search.savedSearch

The raw query string, again including Microsoft files, found in the saved search:

(kMDItemLastUsedDate = "*") && ((kMDItemContentTypeTree = public.content) || (kMDItemContentTypeTree = "com.microsoft.*"cdw) || (kMDItemContentTypeTree = public.archive))

Open finder if you have selected On My Mac to switch to defaults click on All My Files shown with red arrow in the screen shot .