Mac 101: Tag almost anything in Leopard
Here's a very simple and even more useful tip from Dennis Best. He's thought of a clever way to tag almost any document he creates in Leopard with Spotlight and a clever use of keywords.When writing a note, composing an email message, etc., he precedes keywords with the ° bullet character (shift-option 8). Later, he can conduct a Spotlight search for " °Tahoe" and find every tagged email message, sticky note, iCal event, etc. Pretty clever!
For added usefulness, save that Spotlight search for a self-updating reference.
[Via Micropersuasion]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Stephen Lang said 12:20PM on 5-05-2008
I really like this idea, although there are even less intrusive special characters to use (you might actually use the degree symbol a lot depending on your line of work). Some other possibilities
Alt-z omega symbol
Alt-0 ordinal o (looks like degree symbol but a little bigger)
Alt-d partial difference (fancy looking d)
Shift-alt-V 'lozenge' (cool diamond looking symbol)
I like omega, because z is close to the alt key and easy to remember, and I personally have never used the key. Plus if I do a Spotlight search for the symbol alone, there's not much that comes up.
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Omni Geno said 12:49PM on 5-05-2008
What is this 'alt' key you speak of? ;)
mark said 1:56PM on 5-05-2008
"Alt" is the Windows term. On the Mac, it's the "option" key. On newer Macs, the option key also has, in smaller print, the world "alt," possibly to help former Windows users make the transition. I still marvel when Mac users refer to it as the "alt" key. But perhaps they were former Windows users. (?)
Francesco Caporusso said 4:22PM on 5-05-2008
I have PowerBook G4 I bought in 2003 and it has "alt" written on the option key as well. I've never seen it in the 5 years I've had this laptop until I read these comments. I still wouldn't call it the alt key, though.
Michael said 4:35PM on 5-05-2008
All Macs in the UK have come with 'alt' instead of 'option' for years (at least seven years, probably longer but that's the oldest Mac in the house for me to check).
It may be the case on other non-US Mac keyboards too, so please don't be so quick to assume they made a mistake and/or are Windows users.
Stephen Lang said 4:47PM on 5-05-2008
LOL, I didn't know there was so much handwringing over 'alt' vs. 'option'. ;-)
I used 'alt' because that was on the special character cheatsheet (for Macs) I found on the web. All my Mac keyboards seem to have both labels on the key, so I never considered which was the real label, and which was carried over from PC-land.
akatsuki said 12:38PM on 5-05-2008
Or you could just use consistent and descriptive subject lines and messages... but maybe that is just me.
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George said 12:47PM on 5-05-2008
I'm not sure if I get this tip — what enhanced purpose does the ° serve? Can't one just add the keywords without the degree symbol to the "Spotlight comments" field for those items without the term contained within? Why one would need a special tag symbol if the content contains the word is mystifying to me.
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jim said 12:51PM on 5-05-2008
Because if you are searching "correspondence" you may want to search only correspondence records and not for the word correspondence. So, if you tag a correspondence record with "&correspondence" the search will only return the records and not the word correspondence.
George said 1:23PM on 5-05-2008
Ah, I see. Thanks!
jim said 12:49PM on 5-05-2008
Does anybody know of way to sort the savedsearch (smart folder) according to date created? All I can see is sort by date modified, which isn't useful for my application.
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Luigi193 said 12:51PM on 5-05-2008
How about using something like default folder that gives a spotlight comment box to save dialogs?
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BabyGotMac said 1:14PM on 5-05-2008
Correct answer.
Using the tools provided by the OS (spotlight comments) only makes sense...it's too bad that isn't part of the default Leopard dialogs. It would be a simple disclosure arrow that allows for tagging or your text description - just like when you 'get info' on a file in Finder. Plop it right below the location or filename selector and you're golden.
Also too bad is that DFX costs so damned much for a single utility.
:(
George said 1:25PM on 5-05-2008
Default Folder X is worth every last penny IMO.
Namdnal Siroj said 3:00PM on 5-05-2008
A good reason for this method is that you can easily use it in apps like iTunes, Address Book, iCal, etcetera, without having to find and tag the original file that contains the info.
Stephen Lang said 4:48PM on 5-05-2008
Using Spotlight comments is of course fine, and perhaps cleaner as well.
But this is a nice way to be able to quickly add some tags 'inline' while editing the document. Or in other words, there's always more than one way to skin a cat...
Gil said 12:58PM on 5-05-2008
The bullet character (•) is option-8.
The ° character mentioned is a degree symbol.
It would be one less key to hold down to use the • character, but really, you could use any odd character you wanted and it should work the same. However, I have heard about certain characters not showing up in Spotlight searches.
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umijin said 1:29PM on 5-05-2008
Bogus symbol choice. As indicated above the ° is the degree symbol - something some of us use fairly often (especially in science).
The • symbol (as suggested above) is a better choice, and actually a bullet.
Gil said 7:30PM on 5-05-2008
…and of course Quicksilver's tagging plugin "gives you the option to prepend a symbol or text to a tag", meaning that you can tell QS what character to use, and it will automatically add it to the start of whatever files you tag with QS.
This is well worth reading:
http://lifehacker.com/software/tags/metadata-as-a-filing-system-169971.php
I'm a big fan of Default Folder X as well.
Namdnal Siroj said 2:43PM on 5-05-2008
I've been using k+something. That's how apple tags it's online documents, so I figured they must have thought about it. Or maybe it's just for "keyword".
Using a special symbol doesn't seem necessary when I think about it, why not just any a letter?
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