After upgrading can't run apps from Spotlight?

R

RobinB

Bit poster
Hello.

I just upgraded from Parallels 3 to 4. I'm running Leopard, and the VM I have is Win XP SP2.

In Parallels 3, I was able to search in Spotlight for a Windows application and run it, which would instantiate the VM and Parallels Desktop and run the app. I no longer have this set up in Parallels 4, and don't know how to get it back.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.
 
Click Configure on the virtual machine window, select Shared Applications and check 'Share Windows applications with Mac OS X' and 'Enable Smartselect' boxes. Then close Configure menu, click Applications at the top menubar -> click Populate under Shared Windows applications.
 
How do you do this with Parallels 5? None of my Windows apps show up in Spotlight.

This is all I want in spotlight too... can it just index what is in the start menu?
 
Same goes for me. Parallels makes OS X alias files that are not displayed in spotlight results (you've got to type kind:alias in spotlight for that). :(
 
The Windows applications are stored in the virtual machine .pvm bundle. Spotlight doesn't index the contents of bundles. A bundle is a folder with a special flag set that prevents you from looking inside the folder unless you use the "Show Package Contents" contextual menu. Package is another name for bundle. Most Mac OS X applications are bundles. Some Mac OS X documents are bundles (like Parallels Desktop's .pvm or .hdd or TextEdit's .rtfd)

If you want to find a Windows application, type Command-Shift-A to get to your Applications folder. Then scroll down and open the Windows applications folder. Then in the search box at the top of the window, type what you want to search for.

Parallels needs to not use a bundle or create a Spotlight Importer to index their bundle documents or something else to work around this problem.
 
workaround

I've created a folder called Links (should be Aliases, it's any OS X anyway) and copied the alias files of the most frequently used applications from Parallels-created Applications folder: Word, Excel, Outlook, VPN Client. Now Spotlight can find them. I also added spotlight comments like "Microsoft Word 2010" to these alias files to make sure that they gonna be a top hit* in spotlight search results.

Regards,

Zoltan

* and not just a one hit wonder.
** sorry for that, I apologize :)
 
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