today, yesterday, this week, this month, this year. These commands in the second pop-up menu offer quick, canned time-limiting options. within last, exactly, before | today yesterday this week this month this year. These commands in the second pop-up menu offer quick canned time-limiting options. within last exactly before after let you be more precise. If you choose Before After or Exactly your criterion row sprouts a month day year control that lets you round up items that you last opened or changed before after or on a specific day like 5 27 08. If you choose within last you ll see that you can limit the search to things you ve opened or changed within a specified number of days weeks months or years. These are awesomely useful controls because they let you specify a chronological window for whatever you re looking for. Tip You re allowed to add two Date rows a great trick that lets you round up files that you created or edited between two dates. Set up the first Date row to say is after and the second one to say is before. In fact if it doesn t hurt your brain to think about it how about this You can even have more than two Date rows. Use one pair to specify a range of dates for the file s creation date for example and two other rows to limit when it was . Name The beauty of Spotlight is that it finds text anywhere in your files no matter what their names are. That s why Apple demoted this option the icon s name to such a low position in the pop-up menu. Anyway when you want to search for an icon by the text that s only in its name this is your ticket. Capitalization doesn t matter. Of course if all you want to do is find files whose names include Sales you may as well save yourself all of this reading and use the Spotlight menu or click the File Name button at the top of the window . But using the Search window offers you far more control thanks to the second pop-up menu that offers you these options Contains. The position of the letters you type doesn t matter. If you type then you find files with names like Then and Now Authentic Cajun Recipes and Lovable Heathen. Starts with. The Find program .
