extraneous files cluttering up documents list in Finder

Hello, everyone --
I have primarily been a PC user until about 3 years ago when our office bought desktop Mac's. For the most part, I've been very pleased with this Mac. Also, a week ago, I bought a Macbook Pro. So far, so good (with the exception of an Airport question -- will post that separately).

Here's my beef. When I use Finder on my desktop Mac at work to look for or organize recent documents, I would like Finder to behave more like Windows Explorer;, i.e., to display ONLY the documents I have created. Instead, when I reorder my Documents within Finder by Most Recently Modified, I get a huge number of recently created files with extensions like .DAT, .SQLITE, .JS, etc. I have not found any way of specifying the viewin Finder in such a way that I can make my .DOC files come up first, then .XLS, then .PDF's, then music files, then everything else (which is what I'd like to do).

Here are some examples of the annoying files that clutter up my Finder window within Documents:

XUL.mfasl
prefs.js
places.sqlite
sessionstore.js
blocklist.xml
xpti.dat

etc., etc.,

It may be useful to know that this computer used to be used as part of a server in our division, but I (since I'm not a tech consultant) don't want or need to be dealing with these files on a daily basis for the most part. I would be happy to either be able to hide them or segregate them somehow, or just be able to separate the documents I create from these system-generated files.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Don't know if this exactly works or helps. But its worth a shot. When you spotlight something click on "show all" OR hit option+Command+Space

Then use the filters (by adding, subtracting) with the plus and minus buttons on the side. And setting your parameters.

example Pic:




Spotlight is a GREAT quick access look tool. Use this for sorting through some more specific stuff, or when a large volume comes up. Hope this helped.

There is another way that does not require manual filtering each time you search. First, activate the Finder and choose View → Show Path Bar. Then open a new search as desired and click on one of the unwanted files that shows up. At the bottom of the Finder window, you will see the location of this file.

Now, leave that Finder window open and open System Preferences. Click Spotlight (under the Personal category) and then click on the Privacy section. Click the + button at the bottom of the list and navigate to the location of the file (as displayed in the Finder window). Once you have found the folder containing the unwanted file, select it and click Choose.

After doing this, files in this folder will not show up in any more Spotlight searches. If the unwanted files are coming from various different folders, simply repeat this process until they no longer appear in the results.