Dopus-10 search within PDF files

Help & Support
1

I have a folder with ~1200 pdf files. In that directory tried a search for a particular word using Dopus-10's search feature and got 25 hits. If I make the search with my desktop search program (Copernic DTS) I get 453 hits. I have verified that Copernic is in fact finding files with the search term that Dopus is not finding.

Although Google DTS can work within Dopus, Copernic can't. However, I don't like Google DTS and have abandoned it. It would be wonderful if Dopus could be fixed to more thoroughly search PDF files that are searchable. (I understand that some PDFs are image-only and are not searchable, but that is not the problem here.)

This has been a long-standing problem in prior Dopus versions. Even though DTS gives fast results, sometimes I need the slower file-by-file search method Dopus uses, so I can employ Dopus' great flexibility in sorting the search results (where Copernic is weak).

In any case, it seems that Dopus should be improved to do thorough PDF searches.

2

Opus 10 supports Windows Search, which should address this.

(Not sure if Copernic hooks into Windows Search but I expect Windows Search by itself can look inside PDF files.)

More discussion here: Opus 10: searching xlsx, docx?

3

AFAIK, Windows 7 does not natively support content search for PDF (reference); however, you can easily install an iFilter plug-in to enable that functionality.

Microsoft suggests using the free Adobe iFiler, but I'd advise against it. Instead, I'd go with SumatraPDF: a free, open source, tiny & lightning fast PDF reader with a native PDF iFilter. When you're installing it, you've to manually select the iFilter option, as it's disable by default.

4

Copernic Desktop Search has an option to replace the Windows search. So the search in DOpus should also use Copernic Desktop Search which apparently does not use.

I would also be very happy if DOpus would work with Copernic Desktop Search!

5

Has anyone tried it? It may just work.

Note that Find and Search are different things in Opus. (Find = Opus's internal code. Search = Opus asking Windows Search to look for things.)

6

Sure, I did. When searching inside a specific directory which IS indexed by Copernic Desktop Search Dopus 10 tells me (yellow message bar): "The place you are searching is not indexed and therefore the search can be slow." (Which in fact IS slow - it does not use the Copernic Desktop Search index).

It would be SO NICE getting the same results as Copernic Desktop Search when searching in DOpus!

7

Which OS are you using?

8

Windows 7 64bit Ultimate

9

What follows tries to point out ambiguities and confusion in finding out about the new Search/Find stuff.

I wanted to test how this works in X1, one of the many alternatives to Windows Search. But I could not quickly find where "Search" hides in Opus 10.

It is not in the Help file, which apologises for not having that bit ready in time, like a just about everything I try to find.

Looking for "Search" in commands delivers "Find" and "Search Field".

Find says "Search for files by name, contents..."

Looking for "Find" also throws up this command.

Maybe I deleted the original entry when restoring my customised menus, etc, but I see no "Search" menu.

I eventually did what I should have done first, which was to look at the "What's New" document. This was slightly helpful, but still too vague for my simple mind.

After restoring the default toolbars, I found that I had not eliminated what may be the Search feature, the "Search" slot in the "Location" toolbar.

Further investigation suggests that this is probably the "Search Field" I found earlier. If so, it is poorly described. It makes no mention of integration with Windows search, as described in "What's New".

Testing this shows that, like other searches that integrate with Windows, it seems, Opus cannot find the content of PDF files indexed with X1. It deals only with names. Interestingly, Opus search does find html files that contain the term I searched on, which were also indexed by X1.

I am not bothered by this shortcoming. I don't expect Opus to match X1's ability to index and search stuff and, for example, to highlight the search terms when previewing documents. I will rarely want to use Opus to perform complex searches. This message is just here as feedback, just in case there are other people who are as slow as I am to grasp these things.

By the way, X1 does replace Windows Search in Windows 7. So that isn't the issue.

10

I decided to try Windows Search, and it has been supposedely indexing files day and night since Saturday -- but seems to be mostly sleeping. So far it has indexed about only 4,400 files, and has nearly 90,000 to go. Looks like this could take all month. Even if I give Windows Search the highest priority via Process Explorer, there is very little disk activity and at most it is using mostly 0.74% (yes, less than 1%) of my CPU capacity, sometimes peaking at 1.47%. It seems very lame to me, except for systems that have very few files to index.

At least I still have my Copernic index (but with that program temporarily disabled while Windows Search does -- sort of -- its thing), and likely will have to scrap Windows Search and go back to Copernic.

As someone else mentioned above, if D-Opus could support integrated use with Copernic, that would be great.

Previously, I tried Google DTS (which also integrates with D-Opus) but it thrashed my hard drive so aggressively that I found it very distracting and my wife got angry about all the noise -- although other than that it worked fine. (No problem with Copernic in the noise and hard drive exercise departments.)

11

The Windows indexer is designed to use only idle CPU time so I don't think boosting its priority will make any difference. Apparently you can configure a group policy to let it run at full speed, see question-defense.com/2010/12 ... ng-process

12

Wow, that really is slow. I also decided to give Windows Search a go on XP yesterday. In my case it took a couple of hours to index about 25,000 docs and that was while the laptop was in normal use - Excel, Word, browser, Lotus Notes, Opus (of course), etc..

Regards, AB

13

I tried what is suggested in Jon's link, rebooting afterwards. It didn't seem to make much difference. I then found two registry tweaks here: pcplus.techradar.com/files/pcp_i ... _guide.pdf.

The tweaks are to find "Gathering Manager" (and confirm the registry location is for Windows Search 4.0), and "set ‘RobotThreadsNumber’ to 1 (one worker thread only) and ‘PerformanceLevel’ to 1. If you’d prefer indexing to be as fast as Windows can make it, set ‘PerformanceLevel’ to 5 and ‘RobotThreadsNumber’ to 0." I used the latter two settings for higher performance, and rebooted. Windows Search then indexed 3,000 files overnight, which was a vast improvement (but still slow). The CPU cycles used were generally still low (although peaking at times at around 20% instead of 1.47%) and there was still a huge amount of idle time. Not rip-roaring performance, even with the computer doing nothing. The indexed files increased from 4,400 to 7,000+ by breakfast .

However, upon rebooting this laptop at work, WS showed only 2,400 files indexed instead of 7,000. I then pressed the button to rebuild the directory, thinking it best to start over. At that point WS reported 0 files indexed and "Indexing Complete." I was unable to get WS to do any further indexing. Totally locked up.

... At which point I gave up and uninstalled Windows Search. Too many hours researching these problems on the web and only finding others with basically the same problem (slooow indexing) that was never solved.

So, here's hoping that GP Software will implement integration for Copernic.

14

I just found that Copernic has an API and and SDK available: copernic.com/en/products/sdk/search-sdk.html

15

How about all the other alternatives to Windows Search?

Does GP Software have to conduct a poll to see which is the most used alternative among Opus users?

I hear that dtSearch is the heavyweight alternative that geeks prefer, although I haven't tried it. Too expensive.

As a user of X1, I'd like that one in there. But in reality I suspect that it is down to how these alternatives work. It may be that they have to work more like Windows Search, then Opus will naturally make the connection.

16

Hi
Any news on integration of Copernic in the search/find functions of DOpus. I use to tag my files and then search for the tagged files (I have tags like Reading, Modelfiles etc. for the files I am reading or working on). Using the find command in Dopus is so slow without WIndows Search (I know I could just use file collections, but it would be great to have the possibility to use Copernic).
Renger

17

Opus supports Windows Search as well if that's what you want.

18

I'm still hoping that Copernic DTS can be incoroporated into Dopus. It's interface is awkward, but I have been using it for several years because it can be controlled to either stay out of my way, or when necessary do heavy indexing.

Late last fall I once again tried both Windows Search and Google DTS (even though it had already been discontinued by Google). For various reasons, I just don't find those products satisfactory (despite the excellent way that Dopus integrates them).

As a free (lite version) or low cost (pro version) DTS program, I think CDTS is a great alternative to WDTS, and if Dopus could integrate it, the combination would be ideal, in my opinion.

In 2010 I wrote to Dr. Perry about integrating CDTS and he replied, "We'll see what we can do in a future version." I'm still hoping, especially now that GDTS is no longer offered or supported by Google.

19

If we are voting for support for third-party search engines, can we have X1?

I don't really expect this, unless the people who write those alternatives to Windows Search can find a way to plug into Dopus.

Or maybe Windows could open up its system in a way that allows everyone to connect whichever searcher they want instead of Windows Search.

In other words, Windows should let us pick the searcher of our choice, and other software could just pick up from there.

Anyone looked at any possible changes in Windows 8?

20

I thought Windows already did that? Wasn't that what Google's search lawsuit was all about?