Spotlight is handy for tracking down files on your Mac's hard drive, but it's useful for finding events in iCal, too. All you have to do is let Spotlight know that you are looking for events, and it will hide other search results for you on the fly.

Here's how to search for specific events in iCal:

• Click the Spotlight magnifying glass at the far right end of your Mac's menu bar.
• Now enter something descriptive for the events you are looking for. As an example, I can find events that relate to the Colorado Macintosh User Group by entering CoMUG.
• Now add kind:ical to your search terms to limit the results to iCal events.
• Spotlight returns a list of matching appointments. Just click the one you want to view, and your Mac will automatically launch iCal and display the event you selected.

Use kind:ical to limit your Spotlight searches to iCal events.

This is a quick way to hunt for appointments even if iCal isn't running. I use this trick to find appointments that involve specific people -- I just enter the person's name along with kind:ical to see past and upcoming events they are a part of.