Spotlight: how to hide email/attachments?

[safe1]

Spent 30 min trying to figure this out with no luck.

I am making a custom search, and I want it to hide emails and attachments (e.g. .docs attached to an email).

I'm using the "None of the following are true" modifier, and I tried using the Mail directory (/Users/myusername/Library/Mail) with no success.

Anyone know a solution?

Thanks in advance!

 

[psykick5]

Sys Prefs > Spotlight and uncheck messages and chats?

 

[safe1]

Sys Prefs > Spotlight and uncheck messages and chats?

Good thought, but I am trying to make it a saved search rather than a global preference (since there may be times I want to find messages/chats).

 

[psykick5]

Good thought, but I am trying to make it a saved search rather than a global preference (since there may be times I want to find messages/chats).

Then uncheck it and search?

 

[dyn]

Open a Finder window and type the keyword you want to search for. Next add an additional search criteria. There is pulldown menu that starts with "kind". If you pull it down and hit the bottom one you get a new window. Search for "mail" and select "Spotlight items" (you could also search spotlight of course). You can add it to that pulldown menu if you want, if not then just select it and hit the ok button. Make sure the pulldown menu to the right says "aren't included".

That will make it hide your mail messages. Unfortunately it will also hide other Spotlight items such as the items in your address book but maybe that's something you want too. What it doesn't seem to do is hide the attachments. I think you might be able to hide those by putting ~/Library/Mail in the privacy pane in the Spotlight preferences like you already did.

Btw, this document by David Pogue at Macworld might come in handy: [PDF] Advanced Spotlight Menu Searches.

 

[safe1]

Very useful info, thanks!!

However, it wasn't able to hide attachments, so after much trial and error, here's what I figured out.

Add this criterion:
"None of the following"
"Where from" - "contains" - "@"

This gets rid of the documents hidden inside attachments.

Hope that helps someone.

Open a Finder window and type the keyword you want to search for. Next add an additional search criteria. There is pulldown menu that starts with "kind". If you pull it down and hit the bottom one you get a new window. Search for "mail" and select "Spotlight items" (you could also search spotlight of course). You can add it to that pulldown menu if you want, if not then just select it and hit the ok button. Make sure the pulldown menu to the right says "aren't included".

That will make it hide your mail messages. Unfortunately it will also hide other Spotlight items such as the items in your address book but maybe that's something you want too. What it doesn't seem to do is hide the attachments. I think you might be able to hide those by putting ~/Library/Mail in the privacy pane in the Spotlight preferences like you already did.

Btw, this document by David Pogue at Macworld might come in handy: [PDF] Advanced Spotlight Menu Searches.