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Get Your Search On: Search Tips and Tricks

Submitted by Michael Johnston on June 29, 2009 - 2:24am.
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By far one of my favorite new features in iPhone 3.0 is Spotlight. Those unfamiliar with the Mac technology, it's essentially a super fast, smart search system. In iPhone 3.0 Spotlight has been added to iPod, Notes, Mail, and Calendar, in addition to the Phone app. This means that you can search for a song in the iPod, a mail message in Mail, or appointment in Calendar. But here's where things get crazy awesome. Swiping to the left of the first home page (the little spotlight icon) will let you search through your entire iPhone. How awesome is that? In addition to results from those apps, Spotlight also finds apps for quick launching.

Keep reading for some awesome search-related tips!

So you probably get the basic gist of Spotlight. Start typing the name of an app and it'll show up in the list for quick launching. You can also search for a contact, note, etc. But how do you organize those search results? Hit up Settings>General>Home>Search Results and you can rearrange the result categories any way you like. You can even disable categories from showing up all together. Awesome!

Now here's my favorite trick. You know those bookmark icons you can make with Safari? Those actually show up in Spotlight! This means that you can make a shortcut to the mobile version of Flickr on your Home screen and easily bring it up just by typing a few characters in Spotlight. Give it a try!

Lastly, here's a super quick way to get to the search field. As you know from one of my earlier tips, hitting the Home button from any Home page will bring you to the first screen. Now when you hit the Home button from the first Home screen, you'll be taken to Spotlight. Trust me, this trick helps a lot.

If you have any search trips or tricks you'd like to share, let us know below!

Spotlight silly

Submitted by smok on June 29, 2009 - 7:53am.
I'm trying to search my contacts for something in the address e.g. town. I can't seem to get that to work in iPhone 3.0 spotlight. Is this a big limitation of it e.g. only some fields are searched in each entry, or am I doing something very wrong?

Submitted by blocktek on June 30, 2009 - 7:09am.
I'm extremely frustrated by the new Spotlight's inability to search events older than 1 year. I'm a freelancer in the television production industry. It is very useful for me to be able to track past jobs where I've worked with a particular client. I transferred 16 years worth of history from Now Up to Date to ICal in anticipation of the search feature. Additionally, although it works within the Iphone Calendar app (with the 1 year limitation), a global search only turns up the most recent occurance of any event.
Is this a bug, or a planned limitation of searching on the Iphone?

Submitted by Michael Johnston on June 30, 2009 - 5:12pm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by blocktek View Post
I'm extremely frustrated by the new Spotlight's inability to search events older than 1 year. I'm a freelancer in the television production industry. It is very useful for me to be able to track past jobs where I've worked with a particular client. I transferred 16 years worth of history from Now Up to Date to ICal in anticipation of the search feature. Additionally, although it works within the Iphone Calendar app (with the 1 year limitation), a global search only turns up the most recent occurance of any event.
Is this a bug, or a planned limitation of searching on the Iphone?
If you're syncing calendars through iTunes (not through MobileMe), you can specify how far back in the past you'd like to sync events. It's possible that the limit is 1 year, but you should check.

Submitted by blocktek on June 30, 2009 - 5:40pm.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Johnston View Post
If you're syncing calendars through iTunes (not through MobileMe), you can specify how far back in the past you'd like to sync events. It's possible that the limit is 1 year, but you should check.
Thanks, Michael. The data is all there on the phone - I can scroll all the way back to 1993. Spotlight just doesn't seem to index any events older than 1 year.

Submitted by Shutterrelease on June 30, 2009 - 5:51pm.
Excellent tips. I really like the one about being able to search web app icons on the home screen. I'll have to try that for my favorite websites. AKA iPhone Alley of course!.......

Oh and Cut and Paste works in the search field too. Not sure how this would be useful though

Submitted by Michael Johnston on June 30, 2009 - 7:12pm.
Wow, that's strange. I don't know

Submitted by Shutterrelease on June 30, 2009 - 8:56pm.
May as well put it everywhere eh. I'm sure someone would complain/sue if they didn't.

...

Submitted by James07 on July 15, 2009 - 6:18am.
Your tips seemed to be great. I will definitely try them. My iphone contacts are lost many times but this time I think I'll be able to recover.

Spotlight Stinks on iPhone

Submitted by RussOniPhone on July 25, 2009 - 3:51am.
I have the iMac and Spotlight for the iPhone is poor, it doesn't even search the body of a email