Mac Search For Folder



Using OS X's Finder, you can do some fancy-schmancy advanced searching, including finding system files for troubleshooting. No more rooting through folders when the results you want aren't. Support Communities / Mac OS & System Software / Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Outlook 2016 for Mac provides searching at various levels of complexity. Here are two methods that many find useful.

Let’s walk through some examples of how to use these to look for and match a variety of file types and file formats in Mac OS. As a quick reminder, you can open Spotlight search by hitting the Command+Spacebar key combo from anywhere in Mac OS and Mac OS X, and you can open a new Finder search with Command+F from anywhere in the Mac file system, desktop, or Finder. On OSX cmd + e searches on the current file, the correct key binding is cmd + p that brings the command palette where you can search for files and much more – Tiago Dec 22 '16 at 12:16 23 This answer looks obsolete or incorrect. Mac OS X doesn’t have an obvious way to view the exact text based path to a folder (otherwise known as a directory) in the finder window. You can have it show a graphical path, but getting just the text based path to a directory (for use in the Terminal for example) requires a couple of extra steps.

  • Quick Search (one mail folder)

  • Advanced Find (multiple folders, more options)

Quick Search (one mail folder, but can be modified)

You can search for a particular message by clicking on the folder where the message is stored, then using the search bar in the upper-right corner of the Outlook window. This method searches only the folder you've selected. It does NOT include sub-folders of that folder (but see the bullets below).

Mac search open folder
  • While typing in the search box, you'll be offered the option of specifying where in the message to search (from, to, subject, etc.). If you do not select any of these specifics, Outlook will search all the basic headers, the subject, and the body of the message.
  • When the search results are displayed, a Search ribbon will appear, allowing you to further refine your results.

Mac Search Open Folder

To return to a full view of all messages, click the X icon next to the search text box or click Close in the Search ribbon.

Advanced Find (multiple folders, more options)

Outlook For Mac Search Folders

Advanced Find offers more detailed options for locating items.

From the Edit menu, choose Find, then Advanced Find.

A Search row will appear at the top of your messages. Use the drop-down list to select a search criteria, then fill in the field or fields associated with that criteria.

To add additional criteria, click the plus sign at the right edge of the search row. Multiple criteria are treated as 'and' statements, that is, a message will be displayed only if it matches ALL the criteria you've specified.

The icons on the Search ribbon allow you to further refine your results.

To return to a full view of all messages, click the X icon next to the search text box or click Close in the Search ribbon.

No matter how much space you have on your Mac, one day, you may see “Your disk is almost full” notification. Even if it seems like there is no app or program that would take a considerable amount of storage, the large files may be hidden deep down in your Mac’s memory. Keep reading to discover how to locate such files on your Mac and delete them for good.

Scan the most obvious place

When looking for large files on their Macs, users often start scanning a bunch of folders stored on their machines. But, usually, the most common destination of all large files is the Downloads folder. You may automatically download thousands of files and forget to remove them. So, checking the Downloads folder on your Mac may help you find lots of forgotten large files and documents that you don’t need anymore.

Looking for the large items may take some time. Free tools, like CleanMyMac X, can accelerate the process by scanning your Mac’s memory and detecting large files. The only task left for you will be to remove the found files all at once.

Find large files using Finder

Another way to search for large files is by using search filters in Finder. It can help you locate the biggest files on your Mac. Here’s how to find large files using Finder:

  1. Open Finder.
  2. Find the Search field in the top right and click it.
  3. Click the Settings symbol and select Show Search Criteria.
  4. In the list of search filters on the left, choose Other.
  5. In the window that appears, select File Size and click OK.
  6. In the second space, select Is greater than and enter the size in the third space.
  7. Choose KB, MG, or GB in a final filter field.

Remember to select This Mac to get a full list of results. You will then see all files which size is greater than you defined. Look through the found documents and remove unnecessary items that take too much space on your Mac.

Although, this method has certain disadvantages. Finder doesn’t give you a full picture of the large files stored on your Mac. It shows only single files, excluding large folders that comprise a lot of smaller items.

It’s also unclear which files you can safely delete without risk of removing important documents. Finder neither provides any additional information about files nor shows which folder the file belongs to. So, it’s difficult to decide whether the large file is important or not.

Continue reading to discover how to find the largest files on your Mac using other methods.

Find large files using the Storage Management app

Another solution is to use the built-in Storage Management app.

  1. Choose Apple menu.
  2. Select About This Mac.
  3. In the window that appears, click Storage. Here you can see how much free storage you have and view the amount of space used by different categories.
  4. Click Manage.
  5. As the Storage Management app opens, select Documents.
  6. Browse the Large Files to delete those you don’t need.

Click any file to see its path at the bottom of the window. The Storage Management app also shows the exact size of each document as well as the date you opened it last.

Apple provides helpful recommendations at the top left to help you optimize your storage. Here you can choose to store all your files in iCloud, remove large files like movies and TV shows, turn on Empty Trash Automatically and reduce clutter.

Outlook

This method is great for those who don’t have a lot of large files on their Mac. But, if you tend to keep many files on your machine, you may consider using the Storage Management app tiresome.

How to find biggest files on Mac via Terminal

Another way to locate large files on your Mac is to use Terminal. Although some users find commands complicated, if you use them correctly, you can find anything on your Mac. So, you can locate the biggest files on your device, just like that:

  1. Go to Utilities and open Terminal.
  2. Execute find command. If you want to locate all files bigger than 1G under the /home directory, for example, type find /home -size 1G.
  3. To delete the files enter
    find /home -type f -name *.avi -size +2G -exec rm {}
    This command will remove all AVI files that are greater than 2GB under the /home directory.

Using this command, you can also limit your search, setting size filters. Then your command will look like this: find /home -size +30M -size -100M. This command will locate all files that are greater than 30MB but less than 100MB.

Mac search for empty folders

Locate and remove large files using CleanMyMac X

If you have enough time, you can look through all data stored on your Mac using the methods described above. In case you want to speed up the process, CleanMyMac X can prove useful. Thanks to its Large & Old files feature, you can look at the bigger picture of all large files found on your Mac and delete them altogether.

Here’s short instruction on how to find and delete large files using CleanMyMac X:

  1. Download the free version of CleanMyMac X and open the app once it’s installed.
  2. Click the Large & Old Files tab.
  3. Run a quick scan.
  4. CleanMyMac X will show you all files stored on your Mac. You can sort files based on their size, type, and access date, to see the large items that can be removed from your Mac.
  5. Check the boxes for the files you want to delete and click Remove.

Using CleanMyMac X, you can remove all unnecessary files quickly and make some space for more important documents.

So, these were some simple methods of how to view all files on Mac and delete them. You can either use Finder, the Storage Management app, or Terminal to find the biggest files on your Mac and clean up your machine of them.