10.5: The two Email Addresses metadata attributes

Dec 18, '07 07:30:09AM

Contributed by: kohlmannj

I discovered this rather confusing dupe in Finder 10.5 while making several catch-all smart folders that included email messages that matched a certain criteria. It turns out that there are two attributes labeled Email addresses in Finder's metadata attributes list (visible when you select Other from the Kind pop-up in the Finder search window):

The correct attribute to use if one is looking for emails sent by a certain email address is the second one in the list above; the one with the lame description. The other (less useful) Email addresses attribute appears to only return Address Book vCards, as you can see in this screenshot.

Note that the Spotlight items metadata attribute must already be included in the search for either of the Email addresses attributes to return any results. One could achieve similar search results by making a search for a certain text string that limits the results to mail messages as well, but if you're making a large, nested search criteria like I was, using the Email addresses attribute is quicker.

Anyway, this should clear up which of the identically-labelled metadata attributes to use when constructing your own search criteria.

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