macosspotlight
I can't sort Spotlight's search results – sorting by Name, Date Modified, et. al appears to be disabled. Google seems to be useless in finding a resolution to this – although I suspect a previous installation of Quicksilver had something to do with this.
I have forced Spotlight to reindex, but it still doesn't work.
Finder otherwise functions normally.
Just use some other launcher. Alfred is also good at learning new associations. If for example you select "Disk Utility" after typing "ut", it will become the new default suggestion for "ut". Very low-maintenance.
You could also try Apptivate. It allows you to assign 2-letter shortcuts (like ⌥UT) for launching applications.
Find the importer used to import that type of file.
mdimport -d 4 -n /path/to/file 2>&1 | grep Imported
mdimport -d 4 -n ~/Desktop/avatar.png 2>&1 | grep Imported
2014-06-19 11:17:04.929 mdimport[30911:412893] Imported '/Users/grgarside/Desktop/avatar.png' of type 'public.png' with plugIn /System/Library/Spotlight/Image.mdimporter.
The above example shows the type as public.png in the Image.mdimporter importer.
Open /path/to/importer/Contents/Info.plist in an editor.
Find the item of the same type as the type of the file that you found from the above command and delete it.
Reimport the importer.
mdimport -r /path/to/importer
mdimport -r /System/Library/Spotlight/Image.mdimporter
Don't forget to have backups and note this procedure may be overridden on OS X updates.
Best Answer
Finder has two different sorting modes (the new Arrange By and the old Sort By) on Lion. If the Arrange By mode is set to something other than none, you can't sort columns in list view by clicking the list headers.
So just select View > Arrange By > None.