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How can I stop Spotlight searching my email?I like Spotlight well enough that I find myself using it a few times a week to help dig files out of my huge archives, but it always bugs me that it sees and indexes all my mail messages too. If I wanted to have all my email searched, I'd do so in the program itself. How do I disable this feature of Spotlight? It's funny how infrequently I think of using Spotlight, actually, because every time I experiment with it, I'm delighted by the results and think "cool, I should use this more often." Seems like you've had that same thought and made it stick. Good job! :-) In terms of your question, I know exactly what you mean. Here's a sample search for my friend and colleague Ken McCarthy. Notice the categories of matched entries:  You can see an entire section of email messages have been matched. To turn this off is pretty simple, fortunately. Choose the "Spotlight preferences..." at the bottom of the menu and you'll be whisked away to the Spotlight System Preference:  To stop email messages being included in your search results, simply uncheck "Mail Messages" and close the window up. I actually prefer to filter out matches that are Bookmarks, Music, Movies, Fonts and Presentations too, just to avoid false hits and confusing results. Now when I do the very same search, the results omit email messages as I'd like:  That should get your Spotlight configured as you seek!
Categorized:
Mac OS X Help
(Article 6684,
Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: file search, mac os x, mac os x customization, spotlight Previous: How do I track the buzz on the Volvo c30 release? Next: How do I limit the volume on my son's Apple iPod? Subscribe!
That only solves a small part of the problem. In this window thousands of e-mails clutter the list, though the checkbox for e-mails is off! That is **way** more annoying than the 3 items your hint eliminates from the popup. So, how to eliminate e-mails from the "Show All" search result window? Posted by: Marc Stibane at May 11, 2009 6:09 AMThanks for the thorough advice, Dave, but I have the same problem as the last comment - I want to exclude email hits from my window spotlight search as well. It is only from there I can do the very useful "open containing folder", and having the window cluttered with loads of emails are not so good... Is there a solution to this? //Nick Posted by: knyck at September 25, 2009 3:18 AMI agree. I don't want to see mail messages in the Spotlight _Window_ results, either. You *can* get rid of them by adding the Library/Mail folder to the Spotlight Privacy list, but then you can't use the Mail app to search mail messages. And I don't want them in the menu results either, but that's easy to take care of with the System Preferences Spotlight Search Results checklist. Also it would be very cool to have an actual column that gives the "enclosing folder" so that you could see them all at once and even sort by them. As far as the Spotlight drop-down results-menu is concerned, you can use Cmd-Enter to open the enclosing folder of the selected item. And a Size column in the Spotlight Window would be great for when you're doing cleanup! Posted by: alanef at August 29, 2010 8:40 PMIts not working....like they said, when you hit Show ALL, it shows all mail. Even when you add Library Mail to the Spotlight Privacy list, it STILL shows. Help.... Posted by: ThatzLIFE at October 18, 2011 11:47 PMI have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!
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