How to Remove Outlook Items from Finder Smart Folders for Mac

OSX Finder Search Criteria to Remove Outlook Items from Smart Folders

1. Open up a smart folder or add search criteria to a Finder Search
2. Press the option/alt key and press the "..." button
3. Change the option grouping to "NONE"
4. Add the necessary filter criteria to exclude the right file types
5. Save

Here are the parameters for the NONE section:

• File extension is olk14MsgSource
• File extension is olk14MsgAttach
• File extension is olk14MsgFolder
• File extension is olk14ExSyncMap
• Kind is Other: olk14_message (actual email messages)
• Kind is Other: olk14_event (actual calendar events)

Once you add these filters to your smart folder's search criteria, you can once again enjoy "normal" searches and escape all of the clutter. Enjoy.

Why is This Even a Post I'd Write? What's Wrong with Outlook & Finder on Mac?

I am a recent convert from Windows to Mac. Overall, the transition has been fairly easy.  I absolutely love the immediacy of powering on as well as waking up from sleep mode. It's pretty close to instantaneous, which is something that Windows, although getting better, has never been able to do for me.  I also love the serious battery life I get from this powerful machine.

That being said, there are a few annoyances that I still face.  I missed window snapping from Windows but I found a great $1.99 app called BetterSnapTool, which is the best $1.99 I've spent in a long time.

Another problem I've had is with Finder and the smart folders. It is pretty amazing how bad Finder is when you consider how advanced Apple is in so much of its software design.  Anyway, at work we are an Exchange/Outlook shop and haven't embraced Google Apps. That was a difficult adjustment to go back to Outlook from Gmail/GCal, but it's doable.

My main complaint though is that since Microsoft uses the Spotlight search engine in OSX to power its Outlook search, all (AND I MEAN ALL) files that are modified and created by Outlook appear in finder search results. I like using "recent" smart folders that will show either files or folders that I've recently opened or modified.

Unfortunately, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of small emails and files that are constantly being opened and modified by the system when Outlook is running.  So, if you click on the recent files folder, you end up seeing a sea of email messages and temp attachment files instead of the actual documents, images, etc. that you were recently working with.

After multiple searches I couldn't really find an easy way to exclude those types of files from appearing in the finder search.  I eventually stumbled onto this post with advanced finder tips. In there, I saw a tip that if you press the alt/option key you can create an option group to change the search criteria from AND, OR, & NONE.  These groups can be combined and with that I knew what to do. (BTW, this is anything but intuitive... so much for Apple always being so easy to use).

By having that NONE option, I was able to add the right criteria to remove all Outlook items from my search folders.

Here it is again so you don't need to scroll up if you haven't already added this to your finder's search criteria.

Here are the parameters for the NONE section:

• File extension is olk14MsgSource
• File extension is olk14MsgAttach
• File extension is olk14MsgFolder
• File extension is olk14ExSyncMap
• Kind is Other: olk14_message (actual email messages)
• Kind is Other: olk14_event (actual calendar events)

Once you add these filters to your smart folder's search criteria you can once again enjoy "normal" searches and escape all of the clutter. Enjoy.

I hope that the new Office for Mac that is rumored to be developed will fix this problem so it won't be necessary. We'll have to see. However, the truth is that I'd be happier on Gmail anyway.

It's Hard to Predict the Future of Marketing

For the last few years I've always enjoyed reading Rand Fishkin's online marketing predictions for the upcoming year.  As Moz has evolved, so have the breadth of the predictions included in each year's forecast. It is fun as well as interesting to get these insights from someone who is so deeply involved in the online space and actually spends time thinking about these things.

Unlike most bloggers or other folks who make predictions, Rand actually holds himself accountable by grading the accuracy of his predictions from the previous year. That fact alone makes these predictions a more interesting read - these are thoughtful and educated guesses on the future, not just some random person bloviating (like most talking heads on TV).

How many of these authors will do a post-mortem on how accurate they were?

Most predictions are hard to get right, especially the further out you look into the future (I'm still not seeing a lot of flying cars despite what I was told when I was a kid). Shorter term forecasts tend to be more accurate. However, Marketing, especially online, is an increasingly more complex and dynamic area that makes it much harder to understand and predict (accurately) what will happen. Even someone who is as immersed in online marketing as Rand finds it very hard to correctly predict the next 12 months.

Here's a quick plot of Rand's self-graded scores on his predictions.  The bars represent the range of possible scores he could get (each year the # of questions vary).

He is only modestly above 55% despite being an early pioneer in SEO and being the CEO of an important online marketing software company. To me, this says less about Rand's ability to predict the future and more about the complexity and dynamism of Marketing today.  Part of that is because Marketing is growing in its influence and scope. Everyone wants to get in on the game. Another reason is the explosion of data, touch points and opportunities for interaction with customers and building relationships. As technology enables quicker innovation, the future gets more and more blurry when it comes to predicting specific details even if overall trends and patterns do become more clear to us.

2014 is a very exciting time for marketers. It's up to us to not only watch to see what happens, but to make the future a reality.

@Rand, I'm looking forward to next year's post (and those that come in between of course).

For those that are interested here are each of the predictions posts from other years:

• Rand's predictions for 2014
• Rand's predictions for 2013
• Rand's predictions for 2012
• Rand's predictions for 2011
• Rand's predictions for 2010