What is the Best File Search Program?

What I don't find in File Explorer is a way to enter a phrase and get
back just those files that have that phrase in its name.

On 01/30/2019 10:05 AM, Ricardo Jimenez wrote:
What I don't find in File Explorer is a way to enter a phrase and get
back just those files that have that phrase in its name.


Agent Ransack and Search everything are both Excellent choices, Each is
better a some things so I use both.

Rene

On Wed, 30 Jan 2019 11:51:17 -0500, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2019-01-30 11:05, Ricardo Jimenez wrote:
What I don't find in File Explorer is a way to enter a phrase and get
back just those files that have that phrase in its name.


???

Here the Search function does exactly that. Give some examples of search
terms you've used, maybe we can help you tweak them.

I put the word classical as the search term for a directory. I came
up with a long list of files, only some of which had classical in the
file name. Those gave the title with that word highlighted in yellow.
I found this very cumbersome to find what I was looking for. How do I
tell it to give only the search phase in the results?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Ricardo Jimenez wrote:
On Wed, 30 Jan 2019 11:51:17 -0500, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2019-01-30 11:05, Ricardo Jimenez wrote:
What I don't find in File Explorer is a way to enter a phrase and get
back just those files that have that phrase in its name.


???

Here the Search function does exactly that. Give some examples of search
terms you've used, maybe we can help you tweak them.

I put the word classical as the search term for a directory. I came
up with a long list of files, only some of which had classical in the
file name. Those gave the title with that word highlighted in yellow.
I found this very cumbersome to find what I was looking for. How do I
tell it to give only the search phase in the results?

I'm fairly certain the rest of the results simply have the word
"classical" somewhere in the text.

If the explorer search works the same as it did in 7, you can use
"Title:searchterm" (e.g. Title:Classical) to limit it to the filename.

Er, well, going off memory anyway, it might be a different keyword than
"Title".


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iQEzBAEBCAAdFiEEBcqaUD8uEzVNxUrujhHd8xJ5ooEFAlxR41 kACgkQjhHd8xJ5
ooHLoQgArtflcOJh2xmXC20wO8Z+6fAKAOjJaEH5+bpRVj0jEK J0ZjeUu8VrVu7O
7hzbKQTnDmZnfi9MMf6X7dHtlpPJNgRxEzmf6RxUk33mNyiKxE etetbaFFnivlDp
wcH+yrlzw5qddM+k9j9T0vVWs1jKX+V/pLXubSXq6v0aw9N5s0mS3FHSPAUA/fmP
jIivVezp4Dg64EQhJcAXcj5ZDYfcfhs23ek0GWn2nnebFGJDoy EnfZ8BL96O76/f
IR9FMK+BL8bVM1m5oHs90R0DssGPostqdt1kqV1u/dtapCtKe3hFZ5cOjIG0+N14
9+OK/QHuq8tXXCnoOIuCEh2bMHK/LA==
=3UGn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--
|_|O|_|
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5 4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

"Ricardo Jimenez" wrote

| What I don't find in File Explorer is a way to enter a phrase and get
| back just those files that have that phrase in its name.

I'd second Rene's post. I use Agent Ransack. Many people
use Everything. The latter requires indexing. I haven't used
Windows search for ages. It never was much good. It's had
little if any ability to look based on file content in non-text files.
It's slow. And in Win10, as I understand it, there's been some
complication to turn search into spyware, reporting to MS
what you look for. (I don't know details on that. I just saw
something recently about MS planning to decouple local search
from online search. Someone else may have the full story.)

Ricardo Jimenez wrote:
What I don't find in File Explorer is a way to enter a phrase and get
back just those files that have that phrase in its name.

You want Advanced Query Syntax, but not just any article will
do, since there will be a lot of WinXP era articles on the
topic. And you might not be dealing with exactly the right
list for the job. While all the versions probably share
the basics, the trick is "how do I verify I have the
article that applies to my OS". And lots of articles refer
to older search implementations.

https://www.tenforums.com/general-su...ax-search.html

content:string
content:"string"

What the content specifier does, is equivalent to WinXP Search
and the second line where you can search for some text in each file.

The Indexing Options (control panel), by default, is set to index
both files and content. The index, Windows.edb, is an inverted
index stored in ESE Jet Blue database. You won't be able to
do anything really useful, until you extend the set of directories
it searches.

When I attempted to change the settings and regenerate the database,
such that only file names would be in there, the gatherer engine
refused to do that, and it still indexes both filenames and content.

Content is only collected for files of known type. For example,
a text file ends in .txt, and the provider for .txt could spot the
word "tomato" and it gets added to the content part of the index.

But say that someone writes a computer program, an EXE, and it
has the word "tomato" in it. It's less certain the provider for
EXEs, allows spotting random words inside. They might not be
delimited as strings with a null on the end.

Since the Windows search is a federated search, if your email tool
has a provider, individual emails can also be indexed and added
to the collection.

*******

Here is a worked example.

https://i.postimg.cc/k5fdy56y/aqs-kn...urself-out.gif

Steps:

1) Start : Run : "control" === open Control Panels

2) Use Indexing Options to define a useful
portion of the C: drive. I was lazy in this example
and didn't knock myself out trying to get every last
stinking directory indexed. You cannot index the
folder containing "Windows.edb" since that would cause
an indexing loop to form. Some folders will be off-limits
for practical reasons.

3) The indexer uses backoff. When you're working, indexing
stops. It may take the Indexer three hours to do the first
pass at indexing 100,000 files on the C: drive. It reads
each and every file for content. (20GB reads, call provider
in each case, grind file up into strings.)

4) When the Indexing Options status says indexing is
complete, then you know your Index is valid. The Windows.edb
could be a file 1GB in size.

5) The Indexing Options has a "rebuild" option, but starting
the index from scratch is expensive (3 hours...).

Once the Index is complete, prepare a "sample.txt" file.
Put some nonsense in it.

You might notice that

content:abc
content:"abc"

produce different results. One matches on any
occurrence, the other finds " abc " type strings.

If you work with numbers, then the behavior gets
really strange. You might generally only get a match
for whole numbers that match. 12321 would not get
matched if you searched for 123, whether 123 was in quotes
or not. This suggests that maybe numbers are stored as
integers, instead of as strings.

Every time you edit "sample.txt" and save, the Indexer,
since it's caught up, will immediately index the change, and
you can do your search a second later. That's
the basic concept at least. There is a USN Journal that
logs "files that changed" and the Indexer reads that to
figure out what files you have updated by saving, instantly.

Most users haven't set up where the Indexer is pointed, so
they're not getting the full power of Federated Search. It's
a stretch to think a user will figure this out by themselves.
I had to find an AQS article to make any progress.

You can also set the properties of the Indexer, so it
does not back off and goes "full steam". However, Microsoft
has set things up such that no more than half your processor
can be used for maintenance tasks, so even if you switch off
backoff by using GPEDIT or a registry entry, you're still not
getting the fastest possible Index building process.

Paul

On Wed, 30 Jan 2019 10:53:36 -0600, Rene Lamontagne
wrote:

On 01/30/2019 10:05 AM, Ricardo Jimenez wrote:
What I don't find in File Explorer is a way to enter a phrase and get
back just those files that have that phrase in its name.


Agent Ransack and Search everything are both Excellent choices, Each is
better a some things so I use both.



I second that. I also use both.

However his question is about searching in file names. Search
Everything is far and away better than Agent Ransack for that. It's
blazingly fast.

If you want to search within files for content, then Agent Ransack is
the way to go.

On 1/30/2019 12:56 PM, Mayayana wrote:
And in Win10, as I understand it, there's been some
complication to turn search into spyware, reporting to MS
what you look for. (I don't know details on that. I just saw
something recently about MS planning to decouple local search
from online search. Someone else may have the full story.)


Why not just restrict your comments to that which you DO know? There is
nothing "turning search into spyware" unless the user wants to do that.
The issue is that many users use Cortana, and those that do might find
Search linked to Cortana a useful feature. Cortana is what reports user
actions to MS, and those that use Cortana either don't have a problem
with that or don't know about that because they don't know Win10 (sound
familiar? It should).

OTOH, I have always completely disabled Cortana, so there is no link to
Search and no feedback to MS or anyone else about what I search for on
my computers.

--
best regards,

Neil

On 1/30/19 8:05 AM, Ricardo Jimenez wrote:
What I don't find in File Explorer is a way to enter a phrase and get
back just those files that have that phrase in its name.


Oh ya, the File Explorer search tool is a real stinker!

I like Super Finder XT

http://fsl.sytes.net/ssearchxt.html

Beware of junkware!

Install on custom only and READ and deny every extra offer!!!

I am going to have to check out Agent Ransack that others have
mentioned.

On Wed, 30 Jan 2019 16:16:22 -0500, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2019-01-30 12:38, Ricardo Jimenez wrote:
On Wed, 30 Jan 2019 11:51:17 -0500, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2019-01-30 11:05, Ricardo Jimenez wrote:
What I don't find in File Explorer is a way to enter a phrase and get
back just those files that have that phrase in its name.


???

Here the Search function does exactly that. Give some examples of search
terms you've used, maybe we can help you tweak them.

I put the word classical as the search term for a directory. I came
up with a long list of files, only some of which had classical in the
file name. Those gave the title with that word highlighted in yellow.
I found this very cumbersome to find what I was looking for. How do I
tell it to give only the search phase in the results?


You probably have "File contents" marked as a search location. Clickj on
the search box so as to bring up Search Tools in the menubar.

Search Tools - Advanced Options - uncheck File Contents.

HTH

It wasn't checked. Under Advanced Options I have
Change Indexed Locations
In non-indexed loactions
no check - File contents
check - System files
no check - Zipped (compressed) folders

In article ,
lid says...
if your email tool
has a provider, individual emails can also be indexed and added
to the collection.


+1. I find it very useful to find Outlook messages based
on keyword content.

On 1/31/19 5:53 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
On Wed, 30 Jan 2019 11:20:39 -0800, T wrote:

On 1/30/19 8:05 AM, Ricardo Jimenez wrote:
What I don't find in File Explorer is a way to enter a phrase and get
back just those files that have that phrase in its name.


Oh ya, the File Explorer search tool is a real stinker!

I like Super Finder XT
http://fsl.sytes.net/ssearchxt.html

Looks interesting. I was always fond of Locate32, which looks similar
to SuperFinderXT except without the awful "ribbon" toolbar. It's a bit
long in the tooth but still perfectly functional. I prefer it over
Everything and Agent Ransack for its interface; the former is too
simplified, whilst the latter is just a bit more cluttered than I
would like.

Its major limitations are that it only has limited "search within"
capabilities (mostly text files) and its indexes are not automatically
updated (although it has a built-in scheduling capability). On the
other hand, it is fast and very lightweight.



Super Finder does have search within. I takes a bit of staring
to realize where it is at.