finder search across multiple xls for one term

[brinded]

I have about 400 spreadsheets nested in various folders on a single
hard drive.

Trying to find a long forgotten spreadsheet, which I can only identify
by a value it contains. Let's say it's 114,167.18

I've used OSX 10.6.2 finder search with 'contains' and at first it
yields nothing.

When I lose the comma, ie 114167.18, several .xlsx spreadsheets appear
as containing that value. Great!

Trouble is, I need the original spreadsheet with that value and it's
an older document, listed .xls as opposed to .xlsx

It seems OSX 10.6.2 finder cannot look inside .xls

Any ideas for work around?

Thanks

 

[John McGhie]

No ideas for a work-around

The component that does the "looking" is the Metadata Importer for
Spotlight, which is included in the /Library/Spotlight/ Microsoft
Office.mdimporter bundle.

However, there are some limitations to this: The first is that the
MDImporter is expecting "text", and Excel often stores numbers as binary.
The other is that for efficiency, most MDImporters scan only the first 250
kb of each file. If the file is bigger than that, the bit you're looking
for will never be indexed.

And Spotlight looks only within YOUR Home folder, so if the files you want
are somewhere else, Spotlight is not looking there.

You could get up to all sorts of tricks using GREP. That looks through the
whole of every file, but then you would need to know how Excel has stored
the data internally (the MDImporter handles this conversion for you...)

http://developer.apple.com/Mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPag
es/man1/grep.1.html

Hope this helps

I have about 400 spreadsheets nested in various folders on a single
hard drive.

Trying to find a long forgotten spreadsheet, which I can only identify
by a value it contains. Let's say it's 114,167.18

I've used OSX 10.6.2 finder search with 'contains' and at first it
yields nothing.

When I lose the comma, ie 114167.18, several .xlsx spreadsheets appear
as containing that value. Great!

Trouble is, I need the original spreadsheet with that value and it's
an older document, listed .xls as opposed to .xlsx

It seems OSX 10.6.2 finder cannot look inside .xls

Any ideas for work around?

Thanks

This email is my business email -- Please do not email me about forum
matters unless you intend to pay!

 

[saltsea]

Thanks John,

Explanation helps counter frustration.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try to push File Buddy to its limits and see
what happens.