May 04, '05 10:11:00AM • Contributed by: Anonymous
Word keeps all sorts of information in word-formatted files, including deleted text. So a spotlight on a word or phrase may bring up word files in which you had deleted those words. You can test this by opening a new file, writing some text, saving the file, then deleting some text and saving again. The deleted text will show up in the spotlight search.
To avoid this behaviour, place a single quote in the spotlight search as the first character: e.g. 'foo bar -- now you'll only get Word files that actually contain the undeleted foo bar text.
[robg adds: I'll admit I don't know why this works, but it certainly seems to -- if you have foo bar in a Word document, a search on 'foo bar will find it. But if your document only contains foo bar as deleted text, the same search will fail ... even though a normal search on foo bar will find it. Clear as mud, right?]
