Searching contents of text files

Hello,

It seems that searching “Anywhere” does not include the contents of text files. Is this the case?

Thanks a lot,

Alan

An “Anywhere” search should include the contents of all the files that EagleFiler knows how to display in the viewer pane, including text files.

Please note that there will be a slight delay between the time when a record is added and when that record is up-to-date in the index so that it can be found by an Anywhere search. This is usually about 10–15 seconds.

Second, it’s possible that your index file is damaged so that EagleFiler was not able to index the document, or so that the document is in the index but can’t be found. If you close the library, open the .eflibrary package using (Control-click, Show Package Contents), and then delete the Indexes/Records.efindex file, EagleFiler will rebuild the index the next time you open the library.

I also have a puzzle about searching, possibly related. Depending on what level in the folder hierarchy I’m at in the Source window, I do or don’t seem to be searching specific files. If I select “Library”, then every file in the library gets searched. But if I search a lower level folder, it seems to only search files that are directly in the folder, not anything that is within a subfolder.

What gives? Is this a new bug? It makes searching in EF rather laborious and error-prone.

Rebuilding the index worked, thanks a lot.

It’s a feature. When you have a folder selected, it displays and searches the immediate contents of that folder. You can select one or more subfolders at the same time to widen the search. The Library is special in that it displays and searches everything.

ok, thanks for clarifying. I will experiment to make sure I understand.

Searching Nested Folders

I am constantly frustrated by this behavior. I found another post, by Rbohn ("Clearer search fields " on 10-24-2007, 06:33 AM) expressing the same concern.

DevonThink searches nested folders. Path Finder searches nested folders. Even Spotlight searches nested folders, when using the search field in a Finder window. I think it’s not unreasonable to assert that searching within nested folders is the expected behavior.

“…select[ing] one or more subfolders” is not a realistic option when I have several levels of subfolders. So I’m forced to search “Records”, which results in unwanted records being returned from folders other than the ones I wanted to search.

I guess I could un-nest all of my records into a number of “shoebox” top-level folders and try to use tags to classify them, but that’s not the way my mind works. Since EagleFiler is supposed to be “folders/tags agnostic”, would you consider implementing an option to search recursively within the folder(s) selected as an alternative to the current behavior?

Yes, it’s on my to-do list.

With EagleFiler 1.4, you can create a smart folder that displays the recursive contents of a folder. Then you can display and search all the levels at once.

EagleFiler 1.6 will automatically search all the subfolders of the selected folder. You can optionally turn this off by unchecking Search Contained Folders/Mailboxes/Tags.