Chapter 3. Finding Files and Folders Fast

The typical Mac has hundreds of thousands of files stored on the hard disk. If you misplace a critical file or folder, how do you find it? It’s a little like looking for a needle in a haystack—if you don’t have the right tools for the job, you’re going to walk away frustrated and empty-handed.

Unfortunately, the search capabilities built into OS X are only moderately effective. The Finder’s Find feature isn’t very accurate. Spotlight searches many different file types quickly and accurately—as long as it has indexed all of the files and folders on your Mac, which isn’t always the case.

For these reasons and others, many Mac users choose to customize Spotlight and use third-party tools to locate files and ...

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