10.5: Use Spotlight's calculations with Quick Look

Nov 27, '07 07:30:05AM

Contributed by: Mac Berry

This might be very specific to me, but it's a solution to something that's been bugging me for some time, and is also a use for a feature that seemed to me to be "cool but pointless."

It seems that Quick Look windows are tied to Finder, rather than being windows in their own right. That means that if you take the focus away from Finder, you no longer see the Quick Look. That's been a problem for me, as I often Quick Look at Excel workbooks and want to do a short calculation using some of the figures I see. Trouble is, as soon as I start or switch to Calculator, Finder loses focus and I can't see the Quick Look window any more.

The solution is simple and obvious (once it dawns on you): bring up the Spotlight search box and type your calculation into that. That way, Finder doesn't lose focus, and so you can still see your "source document." It's almost as if Apple added calculations to Spotlight specifically to overcome this issue.

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