dribbler

That did it! Many thanks. Guess Apple changed the MIME type at some point. What didn't change was the file extension. It would be *wonderful* if I could specify the file extension (similar to the "grep \.key$" in my mdfind) in workflow searches, as they would survive such back end modifications

Thanks super for helping! For my mdfind, I chose "-onlyin ~", so it's not searching the entire drive, just my home folder. It's not finding any of the Keynote files. When I dropped a Keynote presentation on the FileTypes window in the workflow, it identified it as com.apple.iwork.keynote.key, but the mdls shows a Keynote files as kMDItemContentType = "com.apple.iwork.keynote.sffkey". Not sure if that has anything to do with this. Screenshots from the file filter workflow: Results from mdls on a file not found: $ mdls CoQ10.key kMDItemAlternateNames = ( "2012 CoQ10.key" ) kMDItemAuthors = ( "" ) kMDItemComment = "" kMDItemContentCreationDate = 2012-11-24 19:44:03 +0000 kMDItemContentModificationDate = 2012-12-06 13:39:47 +0000 kMDItemContentType = "com.apple.iwork.keynote.sffkey" kMDItemContentTypeTree = ( "com.apple.iwork.keynote.sffkey", "public.zip-archive", "com.pkware.zip-archive", "public.data", "public.item", "public.archive", "public.presentation", "public.composite-content", "public.content" ) kMDItemDateAdded = 2013-10-28 03:48:39 +0000 kMDItemDisplayName = "2012 CoQ10" kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = 2012-12-06 13:39:47 +0000 kMDItemFSCreationDate = 2012-11-24 19:44:03 +0000 kMDItemFSCreatorCode = "" kMDItemFSFinderFlags = 16 kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon = (null) kMDItemFSInvisible = 0 kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden = 1 kMDItemFSIsStationery = (null) kMDItemFSLabel = 0 kMDItemFSName = "2012 CoQ10.key" kMDItemFSNodeCount = (null) kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID = 20 kMDItemFSOwnerUserID = 501 kMDItemFSSize = 32139118 kMDItemFSTypeCode = "" kMDItemKind = "Keynote Presentation" kMDItemLastUsedDate = 2014-12-30 17:12:49 +0000 kMDItemLogicalSize = 32139118 kMDItemPhysicalSize = 32141312 kMDItemTitle = "" kMDItemUseCount = 4 kMDItemUsedDates = ( "2014-12-30 06:00:00 +0000" ) ~$

I decided to make a workflow for one of my most common tasks, searching inside talk files for a keyword. I: selected Templates > Files & Apps > File filter from keyword and open, and then set the name, etc., dragged a Keynote and a PowerPoint file to the "File types" box, added the two main folders where talks exist in the Search Scope tab, and added "kMDItemTextContent" in the Advanced tab. It works as expected to find talks with a keyword inside, but it is only showing 2 of the 6 files that mdfind coenzyme -onlyin ~ | grep \.key$; mdfind coenzyme -onlyin ~ | grep \.pptx$ does. Is my problem what I have set in Default Results? Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the reply. What would be ideal would be to use Alfred to navigate to the directory and then to be able to specify the phrase to recursively search through that directory for files containing that phrase and also to be able to specify the file type to search, and finally to be able to open a file chosen from the resulting list. It's something that I do fairly frequently for different search phrases, directories, and file types, and I can't imagine that I'm alone in using a file system in this way Alfred's very intuitive interface for finding a directory gets me to the first part. If you can think of a way for me to then specify the phrase to recursively search through that directory for files containing that phrase and also to be able to specify the file type to search, returning a list of files for the standard resulting Alfred interface options, that would be wonderful I thought about writing a little Ruby/Tk script or something like that to select the directory and to specify the phrase and file type and then (somehow) to pass the resulting list to Alfred, but before I went there, I wondered if Alfred had a better way

I think that I do understand the complexity of what I'm asking. Take for example the terminal implementation in OSX of the example query that I gave: mdfind coenzyme -onlyin /Users/me/talks | grep \.key$ Pretty straightforward. I'd prefer to use Alfred, but firing up a terminal is easier than creating a workflow. It's just too bad that in the Alfred search box there can't be more than one modifier, apparently.

Yep, that answers 1/3 of my question Sure, if I put "in coenzyme" into the Alfred search box, I'll get a jumble of files with "coenzyme" in them. However, what I wanted was a way to: ...find a directory based on a keynote search (say one of several "talks" directories on my drive), and recursively search inside that directory for files of a certain type (Keynote) that contain the word "coenzyme". So far, putting "in coenzyme" into the Alfred search box doesn't come close to the functionality of spotlight, which at least organizes by file type. I'm feeling that there must be a way to do the other 2/3 of my question, but I haven't hit on the process. Help for the full answer would be much appreciated

I've used Alfred for a few years but am a total newbie when it comes to doing anything beyond quickly finding a folder and opening a file. What I'd like to do is search inside files, and I've tried to figure out how to do that a few times but without success. For example, if I want to find the word coenzyme in a Keynote file, I just open up spotlight, type "coenzyme" and look for the presentation section that contains Keynote results. What I imagine Alfred allows would be for me to find a directory based on a keynote search (say one of several "talks" directories on my drive), and recursively search inside that directory for files of a certain type (Keynote) that contain the word "coenzyme". Can someone tell me how to do that? Creating a workflow seems cumbersome, as I'll be commonly searching for different words in different types of documents in different places. Many thanks in advance!