Collections & Opus Advanced Search

I am here because windows search indexing is trying to flay my very soul. It is bad. So bad. I have read and done countless steps to try and speed it up over the years, its just bad and always will be.

The 'advanced search' within Opus (and the Search Everything app) are both great. I type in some tags, and these will find every file even in test folders I setup to test if they can actively find new items. Opus will be a little slower on non-index items, but it WILL find everything eventually (windows search does not do this reliably) Good!

The bad part is that collections and queries seem to rely on windows search. Is there a way to have queries collections to work off opus advanced search so I can not go insane? I cant trust windows search, and that means I cant trust the queries that use it, and I really want to use this feature in opus.

Thanks

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It's up to you whether you use Windows Search or Opus's own functionality. Both output the results to collections.

If you want Windows Search, use the search field at the top right of the window (by default).

If you want Opus's own functionality, use Tools > Find Files. (This does not use any search index at all.)

I am mainly talking about the ability to use opus search inside of collection queries. The below only uses windows search as a function with no option to have this tool use opus search or advanced search syntax. I understand how to use them outside of collection queries as i really only use the advanced search feature (which is opus driven search like you said).

Below is just a shot of your typical collection query. The search syntax here is windows 10s unreliable search, and the syntax is valid as i forced it to work by manually coping files. There are roughly 1000 files that match inside the queried folder. Again, this isnt an issue with opus, this is windows search being bad, and this is why I would love an option to use opus built in search to populate these collection query windows.

Thanks

At the moment that can't be done but we'll put the idea on the list for the future. Thanks!

Cool, thanks gentlemen!

@Paultimate

I use Windows search all the time. On my system the following works perfectly

date:01/01/2015..31/12/2015

If you want to find the files modified within two dates

modified:01/01/2015..31/12/2015

Up until very recently Windows search was a real pain in the backside, but the very lalest iteration of the operating system has improved the facility tremendously. Indexing is many times quicker, index corruption seems a thing of the past and the search speed can only be described as phenomenal.

However, of course you must make sure that the the file types you wish to index are set up correctly and you are using the SQL search correctly.

Can I recommend looking at:

As a good starting point.

Windows search does have some glaring omissions in that it will not index the metadata field called description by Opus and there many other fairly important metadata fields it does not yet index.

It is easily possible to get around the description field problem with some scripting. The other missing fields like Horizontal resolution are not so easy.

On the up side, the integration in Opus is superb and the speed is tremendous. I use it scores of times a day to search picture metadata and it renders the need to have complex folder structures redundant.
It may drive you mad at first, but the results are well worth the effort you put in.