Neither Hazel nor I seem to see 'Date Opened'

As a habitual clicker-saver packrat I've long dreamed of something to nag me, "If you haven't even looked at it since you brought it home you should throw it out". So Hazel sounded just the thing, and I'm trying her out.

But try as I might, I cannot get her to recognize any 'Date Opened', so a rule like 'If Date last opened is in the last 1 day' fails to find anything, while '…is not in the last 1 day' finds everything. No matter which I run, it makes no difference whether the files and/or folders have sat untouched for years, or have been recently opened, either by double clicks or by Open… commands within applications.

Other posts here suggest the 'Opened' date should be readable in More info in any Get Info… window, but all I see there is a pair of dashes '--'. That seems true all over my 'puter, and would account for the all or nothing rule behaviour. Is that indeed where 'Opened' data should be? If so, any ideas why it's not there? (I am running 10.4.11 on a MacBook) If I try to make rules for 'Added', might they also fail because that data is also a More info item?

Finally my dire suspicion: that somehow this is Spotlight index data that Hazels depends on, and my real problem is that I disabled and replaced it. Does that mean if I want Hazel to work for me I'll have to get her her own personal SL? I just know she won't keep it in her room, and I'll be stumbling over it everywhere. Please say it ain't so.

Hazel does require Spotlight for many fields and I believe Date last opened is one of them. If you are ok with the command line, you can try using 'mdutil' to check the Spotlight index.

Date added is different as that is recorded by Hazel. Note that that also means that any files added before Hazel started monitoring that folder will not have an accurate date added but any files added afterwards will.

Thank you, even if you confirmed my fear. For the command line, I'll have to seek out a child to lead me, but I'm hoping she'll report there hasn't been a SL index for a long time. I did try really hard back then. I'll have to reconsider that part of Hazel's duties, and her demand for a tool I loathe. Mayhap she'll convince me it has some use after all.

Thanks for the Date added heads-up; that's obviously the less precise but useful interim workaround. And of course, there's the ever more looming pressure—now from Hazel as well—to upgrade a Cat or two, which may bring me Spotlight, improved.

Thanks again.

I set up one of my first rules and it looks in the download folder and subfolders of it. It selects any downloads that have the extension .dmg and have a date added over 2 days old. I noticed that only dmg files downloaded this year in Feb and March were moved while older ones were not. I suspect that it is because of what Mr_Noodle said above.

Is there any way to get around this as it appears most of the date functions work as date added? I guess I could just move them manually.

If it's only two days, then even the older files should be moved after that time. The problem with the older files is that their date added is set to whenever Hazel first encountered them, and not the actual time long ago that they were added.

Also, check the preview to make sure they are matching the way you expect. It's possible they are matching some other rule.