I defined a search-field in the bar at the bottom of my Listers. There are four selectable choices how to search:
Windows-search
Everything-search
Global Everything-search
Opus-search
But ONLY the variant "Windows-search" is able to find text inside all of the common document-files (.txt, .rtf, readable .pdf, .docx, .csv etc.).
further:
As I also like(d) the non-indexed Opus-search (Ctrl+F) because of its variety of filter-options I wish, Opus-search would be able to find text inside documents. I am almost sure that this worked once. The searches took a long time because they worked non-indexed, but it worked.
Is there any way to get Opus-search to find text inside of documents?
Easiest way is via the Tools > Find Files panel, which has a field for searching contents.
With the toolbar search field, I think it can be done as well but it requires some extra typing every time.
A Find-As-You-Type mode could also be added via scripting which searches for content using non-indexed searching, if it’s something you need a lot and don’t want to do via the larger Find Files panel.
but as I told, Opus-search has problems to find strings in documents - both using the files panel (Shortcut Ctrl+F ) or the toolbar search field. This is the reason for my request
Of course "Use wildcards" and "Search content" were checked and I also made attempts with many other combinations.
I did another test, maybe that narrows down the problem:
I searched in my documents folder, that contains around 45.000 document files and subfolders, for a string (all included PDF files are searchable).
On the left lister I did a search with Windows-search, on the right lister I searched for the same string with Opus-search. In Opus-search "Use wildcards", "Search content", "Search Files", "Partial Match" and "Assume UTF-8..." were checked.
Windows-search detected 883 documents and folders while Opus-search only detected 54. Opus search detected the string only by files (or folders), that meet the following properties:
the string is part of a filename or a folder and/or
the string is part of the content of a file with the following extension:
.xlsx
.dot
.csv
.xml
Opus-search does NOT find the string if it is part of the content of a file with the following extension:
.pdf (searchable)
.rtf
.docx
Is there perhaps an option somewhere in DOPUS that I accidentally changed that causes certain file types to be excluded from the search?
Or is this maybe caused by some wrong Windows presets?
PDFs are not plain-text documents, and searching inside PDFs requires an IFilter be installed. Many PDF viewers include one (although installing another PDF viewer can break it).
This is the same in most search tools, not just Opus, and includes Windows Search (at least to my knowledge). I'd expect the same content to be found using Opus as anything else (including Windows Search within Opus), aside from differences that come down to indexing (Windows Search might not find things in a non-indexed folder).
But if you don't think Opus's content search will work here, why did you ask how to use it?
But .rtf or .docx are "normal" text documents and the Opus search doesn't find anything here either.
In fact, I think it worked once. Slow (without index) but reliable.
I'm not asking how to use the Opus search, but rather why, at least on my computer, it doesn't find the content of normal text files such as rich text or Word documents (apart from the content of searchable PDF documents).
And I ask because I would like to use it as an alternative and because of its diverse filter options. And I'm asking to find out how I could possibly fix the problem: after all, the Opus-search offers the option to find character strings within documents. What would be the point of this option if Opus-search was technically unable to search the contents of the most widely used text file formats?
I can't imagine that Opus-search shouldn't be able to search the contents of a rich text document, for example. That's why I think the error is mine, maybe due to an incorrect configuration
However, Opus Search still fails to find strings in most document file types I use.
For testing, I created 4 documents with the text ABCDEFG and saved them as
A_B_C.rtf
A_B_C.docx
A_B_C.pdf
A_B_C.txt
I saved the first 3 from MS Word and the TXT file was created using Notepad.
When searching for the string ABCDEFG using Windows Search, the text was found only in the first three, not in the TXT file (perhaps the latter was not yet indexed, while saving the first three from Word ensured that they were immediately were indexed).
When searching for content with Opus-search, the situation was exactly the opposite: the string was only found in the .txt file, not in the other 3.
By the way, that's also a reason why I want Opus search to work well: I don't really trust Windows' indexing.
When I was searching the Internet for a possible solution to fix Ifilter problems, I came across the program "FileLocator". With this tool (trial version) the string was now found in ALL 4 files.
Of course, I would be happy if the Opus search could also provide search results like “FileLocator”. But I don't want to bother you any further with my specific problem, as there seems to be no easy solution.
Since a 100% reliable search function is sometimes very helpful in my office, I will simply use “FileLocator” in the future when it matters.
There are limitations to the tasks DOPUS can perform. I use FileLocator Pro for most of my search activities. The Lite (free) version currently covers all my search needs. In particular, it is possible to search for text in Word documents. It's ligning fast. Of course, I also use the search function in DOPUS.
Jøran Toresen
