How to Create a Recent Documents Smart Folder on Mac OSX

There's a feature in Mac OSX Tiger that allows you to create what's called "Smart Folders" that takes a set of criteria and displays all the documents, images and folders that fit those criteria. You can sort by Kind, Last Opened, Last Modified and other criteria.

One way to use this feature is to create a "Recent Documents" folder to keep all the documents that you've been editing. This allows you to easily access things you've been working on in one place even though they may be in different folders on your computer.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A computer running Mac OS 10.4 Tiger

1. 
   The Finder Icon

   In Mac OSX Tiger, open your Finder. (Click on the "Finder" icon on your Dock or double-click your hard drive icon on your desktop)

2. 
   File > New Smart Folder

   Select "File" from the top menu of the finder, and click on "New Smart Folder." The keyboard shortcut for this is Command-Option-N.

3. 

   To tell the "Smart Folder" to search your entire computer, select "Computer" below the toolbar of the "New Smart Folder" window. You could also restrict your search to a specific Server, your Home directory or other areas of your Mac computer.

4. 

   To create a "Smart Folder" that retrieves only documents, set the "Kind" criterion to "Documents."

5. 

   Underneath the "Kind" criterion, select the drop down that says "Last Opened" and change that to "Last Modified."

6. 

   To tell the "Smart Folder" to find all the documents that have been modified on your computer since yesterday, next to the "Last Modified" criterion, select "Since Yesterday."

7. 

   Verify that these are the right kinds of files you want in your "Recent Documents" folder.

8. 

   On the top right of the "New Smart Folder" window, just beneath the search box, hit the "Save" button.

9. 

   Type "Recent Documents" in the "Save As" text field.

10. In the "Where" drop-down, select where you'd like to save your "Recent Documents" folder. Since you'll access this folder frequently, put it where you can find it easily, preferably on your Desktop.

11. 

    If you want to add the "Recent Documents" Smart Folder to your Sidebar (the area of your finder window that has your Network, Hard Drive, Desktop, Your Home Folder, etc...) make sure the checkbox for "Add To Sidebar" is selected.

12. Hit "Save" when you're done with steps 8 through 10.

13. Now you can access all the documents you've modified since yesterday. Mac OSX will refresh this folder every day and whenever you modify another document.

Tips & Warnings

• In Mac OSX Tiger, Smart Folders work best when you have one criterion set for Kind and one other criterion for when the file was modified/opened. Setting more than three sets of criteria will likely result in an empty folder. The next release of Mac OSX, code named Leopard, will hopefully improve on the search capabilities of Smart Folders.

Resources

• Apple Computers

[SmithM99]

on 7/27/2008 thanks, couldn't do it before

[liveandgrow]

on 10/18/2007 Very helpful!!! thanks so much. Am thrilled there are other MacAddicts on eHow. Helen/liveandgrow