Default Possible? File/Open Finder to Only Show Word Documents?

[DCP59]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor: Intel Forgive a stupid question from a Mac Newbie.

Is there a way to set Office or OSX defaults so when I try to open an existing file from Word, Finder only shows Word documents? I see the "Enable" box at bottom, but that only grays out the non-enabled files and you still have to look through them. I also have added a "kind" column to finder, but again that only helps sort; everything still shows.

I also see that when you "arrow down" you skip to the next "enabled" file. All this helps, but you still have all the grayed out files on the screen.

Is there a way to get only "relevant" (to be user defined or figured out by the context) documents to show in Finder? This is easy to do when opening new files from Office in Windows.

Thanks.

 

[CyberTaz]

AFAIK, that's determined by the OS & there's definitely nothing that can be
done within Word (or any app I know of) to change that. There may be some
sort of file management utility or Finder substitute but I'm not sure. You
might check VersionTracker.com to see if something does exist.

 

[DCP59]

I'm a total Newbie to Mac, so maybe this will not work or is not a good idea, someone w/ more experience can let us know, but I have played around and found a way to approximate what I was looking for by setting up a SmartFolder which then becomes the default for an application (until you "look" somewhere else) as follows:

From Word, do File/Open to open a FInder Window. Click in the search box at upper right. Type an x (or any character). This changes the Finder window to a search window. Immediately erase your one character in the search box or it will mess you up later. Click on the + sign in the upper right. A new row appears. On the left select "kind" then select "others" then type in . In the upper right click Save and give it a name like "Word Documents". I suggest you do NOT click "display smart folder in this application only" as that changes the behaviour in less desireable ways, as best I can tell, and leaving it unchecked will not mess up other applications.

Now you can exit the FInder/Search Window and exit Word and reopen word and find that Word searches only in this newly created SmartFolder which only displays Word documents (which shows up on left of Findfer box.)

As long as you do not navigate to another Folder or "Place" while opening Word, it will continue to default this way, as best I can tell after playing with it for all of 10 minutes. (Someone else with more experience may tell us otherwise.)

If you ever move "away" from this smart folder, you can just navigate back (left side of Findner window) next time you try to open a file in Word and it's back to being the default.

I have not found a way to make it "stick" even if you navigate away, but this is a help as it is.

Obviously, if you are looking for an rtf or txt document you will need to navigate away from this SmartFolder or the file will not show.

I have found this also works if you type Excel for Excel. For Powerpoint you can select "Presentations" from the drop-down. If you do this for all three, then each only shows you the relevant files when you do File/Open from within the App.

One oddity: where the Finder window lists "xx items" I sometimes get a spinning Icon and it says "0 items" while it spins. But this does not appear to affect function.

For many this may be more trouble than it's worth, but for me it's a help. If someone knows a reason this is not a good idea, please let me know.

Thanks.

 

[DCP59]

My post above removed the word WORD which I had I typed in making the instructions incomplete.

You need to type the word: WORD in the blank both after selecting
Kind: Others: Word

 

[Jim Gordon Mac MVP]

Version: 2008 Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Processor:
Intel Forgive a stupid question from a Mac Newbie.

Is there a way to set Office or OSX defaults so when I try to open an
existing file from Word, Finder only shows Word documents? I see the
"Enable" box at bottom, but that only grays out the non-enabled files
and you still have to look through them. I also have added a "kind"
column to finder, but again that only helps sort; everything still shows.

I also see that when you "arrow down" you skip to the next "enabled"
file. All this helps, but you still have all the grayed out files on the
screen.

Is there a way to get only "relevant" (to be user defined or figured out
by the context) documents to show in Finder? This is easy to do when
opening new files from Office in Windows.

Thanks.

You can limit the visibility to Word recent documents using File >
Project Gallery > Recent and set the format to Word documents. You can
adjust the number of recent files well into the hundreds without
suffering any performance problems, which you can adjust using the
Project Gallery's settings tab.

While this won't work for every single Word document on your system, it
will work for the vast majority.

-Jim