How to Find a File on a Mac

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By eHow Contributing Writer

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Mac OS 8.5 or later includes Sherlock, a vast improvement over the older Find File command, but you can launch it the same way.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Step 1

Click on the Apple menu and select Sherlock. Or, from the Finder, press the keys Command-F.
Step 2

Choose your search criteria. You can search by one or more attributes of the file (name, size, type, date modified, creator and so forth).
Step 3

Choose a location to search. You can search locally or on a network.
Step 4

To search the actual contents of a file for specific phrases, click on the Find by Content tab, then specify the phrase and a location in which to search. If the Find button is dimmed, click Index Volumes (indexing may take a while).
Step 5

Search the Internet by keyword by selecting the Search Internet tab.
Step 6

Click Find to run the search.

Tips & Warnings

When you search by name, the search finds all filenames that include the phrase you typed. So a search for 'apple' would find files named 'Aunt Mary's apple pie recipe' and 'Apple Computer stock prices.'
In the Sherlock results list, if you click once on the icon of a file, Sherlock will give you its location, no matter how embedded within folders it may be. If you double-click on the icon, the application will launch.

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