Top Customer Issues

• General Questions
• Limitations
• Known issues
• Can you help me get started?
• Will there be a Windows version?
• What are the requirements?
• Specific Questions
• How is HoudahSpot different from Spotlight?
• How can I hide HoudahSpot from the Dock?
• Troubleshooting
• Why does HoudahSpot keep showing a "Stop" button?
• Why does HoudahSpot not find my file?
• Why does HoudahSpot not see the contents of my file?
• Why does HoudahSpot list that many folders?
• HoudahSpot 3 upgrade
• What's new in HoudahSpot 3? New!
• How much is the upgrade? New!
• Where can I download HoudahSpot 2? New!
• How can I upgrade to HoudahSpot 3? New!

• General Questions
• Limitations
  HoudahSpot is based on Apple's Spotlight technology. It finds only what Spotlight can find. Apple chose to exclude some select system directories from the Spotlight index. By setting your privacy preferences you may have excluded some more.
  
  Spotlight relies on importer plug-ins to index file content and metadata. Such importers are provided either by Apple or by the respective application authors. If you can't find a file by contents, you may lack the appropriate importer. Try searching for the file by name.
  
  
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• Known issues

  Corrupted Spotlight index

  
  If you are seeing odd results in both Spotlight and HoudahSpot, you may have a corrupted Spotlight index. You should rebuild it. We recommend Spotless by Fixamac Software.
  
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• Can you help me get started?
  Sure. There is a quick start guide included with the built-in Help.
  
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• Will there be a Windows version?
  HoudahSpot is a Mac program at heart. Houdah Software specializes in quality software for Mac and iPhone. Consequently no Windows version is planned.
  
  Let this be another good excuse for switching to the Mac. Not that you needed any.
  
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• What are the requirements?
  HoudahSpot requires Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 with Spotlight enabled.
  
  
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• Specific Questions
• How is HoudahSpot different from Spotlight?
  HoudahSpot builds upon the powerful Spotlight engine. It aims to provide a front-end that is both more convenient and more potent than Apple's offerings.
  
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• How can I hide HoudahSpot from the Dock?
  You may want to keep HoudahSpot running in the background and yet hide it from the Dock and the application switcher.
  
  In order to disable the Dock icon, you may proceed as follows:
  
  1. In the Finder, right-click the HoudahSpot icon
  2. Choose "Show Package Contents"
  3. Open the Info.plist file
  4. Locate the following lines:
  
<key>LSUIElement</key>
<false/>

  5. Replace with:
  
<key>LSUIElement</key>
<true/>

  6. Relaunch HoudahSpot
  
  Please be aware that the HoudahSpot menu bar will no longer be available after removing the Dock icon. It is thus suggested you configure the preferences before disabling the icon. In order to keep access to templates, you may want to enable the global menu item.
  
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• Troubleshooting
• Why does HoudahSpot keep showing a "Stop" button?
  HoudahSpot shows a spinning progress indicator while searching for files. Once it is done the query stays "live": the list of results is updated as files are created, modified or deleted by other programs. You may stop this and return to the query form by hitting the red "Stop" button.
  
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• Why does HoudahSpot not find my file?
  HoudahSpot builds upon the powerful Spotlight engine. It can only find those files Spotlight knows about. Apple chose to exclude some select types of files and locations from the Spotlight index. By setting your privacy preferences you may have excluded some more.
  
  You may force Spotlight to index otherwise excluded locations by issuing the following at the command line:
  mdimport /path/to/the/location
  
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• Why does HoudahSpot not see the contents of my file?
  Spotlight relies on importer plug-ins to index content and file metadata. Such importers are provided either by Apple or by the respective application authors. If you can't find a file by contents, you may lack the appropriate importer.
  
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• Why does HoudahSpot list that many folders?
  Spotlight seems to consider a folder as modified if any of its contents is modified. HoudahSpot thus list both the modified file and its parent folder. You might want to exclude folders from your query. Use a "Kind" criteria embedded in a "none" group to do so.
  
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• HoudahSpot 3 upgrade
• What's new in HoudahSpot 3?
  HoudahSpot 3 adds the ability to tag files.
  
  Tags are non-hierarchical keywords assigned to files. They serve a similar purpose than folders. The crucial difference being that a file may be assigned several tags and be located by any of them.
  
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• How much is the upgrade?
  HoudahSpot 3 is the first ever paid upgrade to HoudahSpot.
  
  A single user upgrade license is priced at $12.
  
  Customers who registered HoudahSpot on or after January 1, 2010 are entitled to a free upgrade. Their license file is accepted as is by HoudahSpot 3.
  
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• Where can I download HoudahSpot 2?
  HoudahSpot 2.7 is still available for download.
  
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• How can I upgrade to HoudahSpot 3?
  HoudahSpot 3 being a paid upgrade, it is intentionally ignored by the automatic update mechanism in HoudahSpot 2.
  
  Please follow this procedure:
  
  - Move your current version of HoudahSpot out of the Applications folder
  - If the HoudahSpot global menu is still show, select "Quit HoudahSpot Helper" from this menu
  - Download the latest version of HoudahSpot
  - Copy the new version to your Applications folder
  - Launch HoudahSpot 3
  - HoudahSpot 3 will recognize your existing license file
  - If you registered HoudahSpot 2 before January 1, 2010, you will be offered the opportunity to purchase a license upgrade
  
  
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