MacOS – How to alter the spotlight category spreadsheets to include ODS

finderlibreofficemacosspotlight

In Lion, the "All My Files" smart folder in finder is based on spotlight search categories. While I can see how from System Preferences->Spotlight->Search Results I can alter the order of these as well as enabled/disable categories, I cannot see how to alter the file types that go into them.

I specifically want to add the Libre Office ODS file type into spreadsheets, but a generalised answer I can use for other file types is even better.

I don't fear cracking out vi and editing system files.

Best Answer

Install "LibreOffice", latest version. It contains the aforementioned mdiimporter plugin. Confirmed just now, to be working. LibreOffice 3.5.6 on OS X 10.7.5

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Hitting ⌘+↩ does the trick.

MacOS – How does Spotlight determine which category a file belongs to

I think it depends on the parent UTIs defined in an application's Info.plist or in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Info.plist. .tex is not included in the CoreTypes Info.plist, so the UTI depends on which application's UTI declaration was registered first. For example on my installation the UTI was com.barebones.bbedit.tex-source and the first parent UTI was public.source-code:

$ touch a.tex; mdls -n kMDItemContentTypeTree a.tex
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
    "com.barebones.bbedit.tex-source",
    "public.source-code",
    "public.plain-text",
    "public.text",
    "public.data",
    "public.item",
    "public.content"
)

When I deleted BBEdit and rebuilt the Launch Services database, the UTI became org.tug.tex and the first parent UTI became public.text:

$ touch b.tex; mdls -n kMDItemContentTypeTree b.tex
kMDItemContentTypeTree = (
    "org.tug.tex",
    "public.text",
    "public.data",
    "public.item",
    "public.content",
    "public.plain-text"
)

Best Answer

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How to open a file from Spotlight in Finder

MacOS – How does Spotlight determine which category a file belongs to

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