General

• Q1: What exactly is FileSpot?
• Q2: Is FileSpot a complete replacement for Spotlight and Finder?
• Q3: FileSpot 2.0? I never heard of FileSpot 1.0.
• Q4: If I buy the current version, will I get free updates?
• Q5: What should I do if FileSpot crashes or does not start up?
• Q6: Why isn't my question on this FAQ?

Technical

• Q7: After executing a search, the status bar says 100 of 150 items shown. Where do these numbers come from?
• Q8: Are search results live?
• Q9: Are the results of a Saved Search stored or recomputed each time FileSpot is launched?
• Q10: Can FileSpot find invisible files and folders?
• Q11: Why does it take so long to load my Saved Search search results?
• Q12: Can FileSpot search for multi-word phrases?
• Q13: I have a file selected in the Finder. How do I tag the file with FileSpot?
• Q14: Can FileSpot find Entourage Messages?

Troubleshooting

• Q15: FileSpot takes a very long time to load.
• Q16: FileSpot can't find a particular file.

General

• Q1: What exactly is FileSpot?
  FileSpot is a productivity enhancing utility designed to make it easy for you to quickly find, open, copy, move, delete, and inspect files. Built on top of Spotlight, FileSpot provides the ability to perform simple text based searches, complex metadata attribute searches, and tag based searches.

• Q2: Is FileSpot a complete replacement for Spotlight and Finder?
  Yes and no. FileSpot is designed as an improved user interface on top of Apple's Spotlight technology and is intended as a complete replacement for Apple's basic Spotlight interface, but is not intended to be a general purpose file browser.

• Q3: FileSpot 2.0? I never heard of FileSpot 1.0.
  FileSpot was previously known as MoRU.

• Q4: If I buy the current version, will I get free updates?
  Absolutely. If you purchase the current version (version 2.0), you will be able to upgrade for free to version 2.1, 2.2, etc. up to, but not necessarily including, version 3.0.

• Q5: What should I do if FileSpot crashes or does not start up?
  Please let us know if FileSpot crashes or does not start up. We can't fix problems we don't know about. If possible, please locate and include in your message a file called "FileSpot.crash.log", usually located under "Library/Logs/CrashReporter" in your home folder.

• Q6: Why isn't my question on this FAQ?
  Perhaps no one has asked it yet. Send us an email with your question and we will add it to this list if it is of general interest.

Technical

• Q7: After executing a search, the status bar says 100 of 150 items shown. Where do these numbers come from?
  The second number (150) is the number of files that match the search criteria (file name, type, etc.). The first number is limited by any currently applied filtering (Filter By Name, Filter By Path, etc.) and by the maximum number of items to show for the current search.

• Q8: Are search results live?
  Yes! As files are created, edited, and deleted outside or within FileSpot, the search results table will automatically update to reflect those changes.

• Q9: Are the results of a Saved Search stored or recomputed each time FileSpot is launched?
  Only the search constraints of a Saved Search are saved, never the search results. FileSpot was designed as the type of application that you always have running, so that it can always be up-to-date with its search results.

• Q10: Can FileSpot find invisible files and folders?
  FileSpot will find any file that Spotlight has been configured to find. By default, Spotlight ignores all invisible files and folders. There is currently no easy way to configure Spotlight's indexing policy (except to add additional folders to ignore). A future version of FileSpot might provide this capability.

• Q11: Why does it take so long to load my Saved Search search results?
  There are many factors involved in how long it takes to perform a search and show the search results. Searching just file names is typically very quick, but searching certain attribute, like 'Color Label', typically takes more time. If the search matches many files, it will take longer to gather all the information to show the matched file.

• Q12: Can FileSpot search for multi-word phrases?
  Yes (with a caveat). You can search for multi-word phrases in metadata attributes or content by enclosing the phrase in quotes. However, if you are running on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), Spotlight does not correctly handle multi-word phrase matches in a file's content (multi-word phrase matching works just fine when searching metadata attributes). Under 10.5 (Leopard), phrase matching in content works as expected.

• Q13: I have a file selected in the Finder. How do I tag the file with FileSpot?
  The easiest way to tag a file in the Finder with FileSpot is to drag the file from the Finder and drop it onto the tag name in the sidebar of the Tags tab. We hope to soon have a Finder contextual menu plugin to provide another option.

• Q14: Can FileSpot find Entourage Messages?
  If you have Office 11.2.3 or later, then Entourage messages are searchable from within FileSpot.

Troubleshooting

• Q15: FileSpot takes a very long time to load.
  This can be caused by problems with certain 3rd-party Spotlight importers (plugins used by Spotlight to index documents created by 3rd-party applications). If you have this problem, please let us know which Spotlight importers you have installed on you Mac by taking a screenshot of the /Library/Spotlight and ~/Library/Spotlight folders. We will attempt to figure out which importer might be causing the problem and then contact the developer of that application.

• Q16: FileSpot can't find a particular file.
  
  • First, double check that your search really should match against the particular file.
  • Next, see if Spotlight can find the file directly. If it cannot, that may be because the file is ignored by Spotlight, in which case there is no way for FileSpot to find the file. Another possibility is that the Spotlight index has become corrupt. You can force a cleanup and reindex of your hard drive by adding then removing your hard drive from the Privacy panel in the Spotlight pane in System Preferences.
  • If Spotlight can find the file, but FileSpot cannot, then please contact up and let us know.