I want to *search* my desktop, not Google it
August 21, 2011 1:21 PM   Subscribe

Are there any desktop search applications which do not have limitations on the file contents indexed (because Google Desktop "[only] searches about the first 10,000 words" - otherwise I'd be all over it).

I'm aware of some other programs, like Copernic or X1, but it's difficult to tell from the documentation whether they have similar limitations. I have a lot of large files - mostly text/html/ebooks, ranging anywhere from 1000 to 250,000 words. And I want them fully indexed if it's at all possible. Is there an app that can do this?
posted by timepiece to Computers & Internet (6 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
(Win7): Control Panel > Folder Options > Search > Select "Always search file names and contents", then search via Windows. The content will not be indexed, but at least you can find it.
posted by sophist at 3:38 PM on August 21, 2011


On the Mac side, check out DEVONthink.
posted by bfu at 3:42 PM on August 21, 2011


dtSearch? Might be overkill for your needs, but check it out.
posted by trip and a half at 6:20 PM on August 21, 2011


Response by poster: Sorry I forgot to mention the OS. I'm on Windows 7.

There's got to be a better way than the inbuilt search on Windows 7. Plus, I just did a search for a term I knew to be in the last 10% of one of my longer files, and it was not in the search results. Granted, it was an ebook format - so I've just obtained the same thing in HTML and txt, and we'll see if Win7 can find any of them. So it might have limitations similar to Google.

While I might be willing to pay for an app, the best price I saw for DTsearch was over $150. That's definitely more than I'm willing to pay - I think I might top out at $40 or so. Though it certainly looked perfect - the documentation said a single file segment couldn't be more than 16Mb. None of mine are even close to that.
posted by timepiece at 6:47 PM on August 21, 2011


I'd also like to find a way to increase the maximum file size / word count limit for indexed items in Windows Desktop Search. I've found it works well enough but for the Reader X .pdf iFilter issue, and this word count limit. Trawled the Googles and this WDS forum without success.
Surely it wouldn't be a hardcoded value...
posted by Tzarius at 4:25 AM on August 24, 2011


Response by poster: I tried out the free version of Copernic Desktop, and it found a term near the end of a 2.5 Mb plain text file. But despite me trying to add the filetypes I wanted searched, it isn't finding those files.
posted by timepiece at 6:36 PM on August 25, 2011


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