"DO" Confusion

[nasteffe]

I have a list of word documents that begin with the prefix DO. When searching 'do', I find that many documents come up that do not have the letters 'do' in the filename itself. My hypothesis is that searching for the letters 'do' brings up anything with a .docx extension.

 

Is there a way to stop Alfred from searching the file extension text? Do you have a different suggestion for how I should proceed?

[deanishe]

Your hypothesis is correct: the metadata fields Alfred searches on contain the filename including the extension, so the extension also gets searched.

 

You have a couple of options, I think, but neither is optimal.

 

You can use the "Anchor searches which are not word based" option in your File Filter (and turn off "Words" for the metadata fields). Then Alfred will only show files whose names start with your query. That's likely not what you want.

Alternatively, you can hide the file extensions in Finder, which should change the files' kMDItemDisplayName metadata fields (which Alfred searches against) to exclude the file extensions.

 

 

Edited March 13, 2018 by deanishe
f

[vitor]

3 hours ago, deanishe said:

Alfred will only show files whose names start with your query. That's likely not what you want.

 

It might be (emphasis added).

 

5 hours ago, nasteffe said:

I have a list of word documents that begin with the prefix DO.

 

Small note, @nasteffe, in case you don’t know what @deanishe is referring to:

 

3 hours ago, deanishe said:

in your File Filter

 

It’s the File Filter Input, which means you’d use a special keyword for those searches, and not the regular Alfred search.

[nasteffe]

Thank you both for your help. I'm new to Alfred and am trying to learn what I can.