Windows 7 Search: how to display appointment start date in results

Windows XP full-text search was a back-ported version of Windows 7 search. It was a regression from Lookout (Microsoft Acquired) but an improvement on Windows Live Search. The UI adapted to the result type, so Appointments showed different attributes than Contacts or Files.

Windows 7 Search is another regression, and a big one. When I hit Windows-F for example (only way to really use it), and use Details view (best view), my Outlook Appointments (meetings, etc) show with 'modified date'. That is not particularly useful.

Fortunately there are workarounds. I don't think they are well known, even after I figured this out I couldn't find any posts on this.

One work around is to switch from Details View of search results to Content View (control is a drop down in the explorer bar - right side). Content View shows attributes appropriate for the data type. Enabling the preview bar and you get something like the XP search interface - albeit without column sort or sub-search and, inexplicably, some standard objects can't be previewed on my machine (tasks?).

Alternatively stay in Details View, but right click on the columns (Name, Date Modified, etc). This will produce a very long list of attributes/columns that can be added. For appointments you want "Start date" and "End date" (if you don't know the name, good luck finding them). You can change sort order. You can add selected attributes for other items of interest. The result for many searches will be a sparse matrix, but you can sort by the columns of interest.

See also

• Advanced search techniques - Vista 5/2007
• Instant Search query commands reference - HowTo-Outlook 
• Gordon's Tech: Operators in Windows Search and Spotlight - Common and Similar 9/2010
• A Search for a Better Search 2011

Windows Search 4 broken by recent update causing MDAC corruption

My XP box index is complete, but Windows Search 4.0 returns nothing. The Event Viewer has no interesting Windows Search Service events; the indexer seems happy, but the search isn’t working. Rebooting didn’t help.

On any search I get "Nothing found in All Locations for query ...".

The only hints I could find wer ea recent post with a Vista problem: SearchIndexer.exe causing problems after Search 4.0 update on Vista Home Premium system. - MSDN Forums and Desktop Search help has no recent advice.

I’ll try doing a windows update, then if that doesn’t work a uninstall/reinstall cycle.

Windows Search was much happier when I was using Office 2003. It hasn’t been the same since I went to 2007.

Update 10/20/08: I miss Lookout for Outlook. Also, Spotlight and all of OS X. Anyway, the Windows Update and reinstall didn't work. This time I'll uninstall, track down my index and trash it, and try again. As before the index is built, everything looks fine, but searches return nothing.

Update 10/20/08: Still not working. I'm running out of ideas. Next step is to uninstall Windows Search 4 and install Google Desktop Search! Instant search works in Outlook, but desktop search doesn't work at all. From a post on MSDN that I wrote:

A few days ago Windows Search 4 stopped working in my corporate XP desktop (all updated). All deskbar searches return "Nothing found in All locations for query ..." regardless of the query. I can't indentify any precipitating event but this is a managed corporate desktop. Anything can happen to it.

Web searches work. Instant searches in Outlook 2007, which use the Windows Search engine, are also working.

The index is fine and it's being maintained correctly.

I've run Office 2007 Diagnostics. I've rebuilt the index. I've uninstalled Windows Search and reinstalled. I've reviewed the Applications event log. I've deleted the index and indexed only a small bit of Outlook 2007. I've relocated my index to a new directory.

Nothing makes any difference. Instant Search works, the indexer works, Windows Search 4 doesn't work.

My corporate desktop is encrypted (SafeBoot), but I've not run into any problems there.

I don't know what to try next. Actually, my next step is to uninstall Windows Search 4 and install Google Desktop Search. I need search to work and I can't go on a lot longer without it.

Later I also reinstalled Office Pro 2007 -- to no effect. I did try Google Desktop Search, but for me it was far too simplistic. It also crashed every day.

Update 10/25/08: The hardest problem I've solved in years. I finally found a 2006 post on an MSDN board about the same problem. Search worked in Outlook 2007, but not from the desktop. It turns out that desktop search uses Microsoft's data query infrastructure (MDAC), and that infrastructure can be broken.

Repair of a broken MDAC stack is occult. Fortunately Paul Nystrom had the answer in 2006

http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=901078&SiteID=1

This generally occurs when you have a corruption in your MDAC stack. You can find instructions for repairing your MDAC stack here (note this solution is not officially supported by Microsoft):

http://www.pqsystems.com/kb/activekb/questions/165/

For some additional information:

MDAC stands for Microsoft data access components. These components allow WDS to query it's index for resutls. When MDAC gets corrupted WDS can not retrieve results from the index resulting in empty query results.

Paul Nystrom - MSFT

I followed the repair advice on the referenced page (I have XP SP 3 installed):

How to repair a copy of MDAC 2.8 SP1 on Windows XP with SP2 installed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Right-click on C:\Windows\Inf\mdac.inf and choose "Install".

. ..point to the i386 folder in one of these places:

1. C:\Windows\ServicepackFiles\i386 (it may not like this location, if not, go to the next one)

2. The \i386 folder on your XP installation CDROM.

This reinstalls and repairs MDAC 2.8.

I used the servicepack files folder first. When asked for a file that wasn't in there I used the \i386 folder our corporate IT had on my drive.

It worked. Thank you Paul.

Hardest fix in years. Without Windows Live Search and Google I wouldn't have had a chance.

So what happened? My guess is that there's a problem with the sequence I took, moving through Windows Search 4 on Office 2003, then XP SP 3, then Office 2007. Somewhere in that sequence I broke MDAC.

The Wikipedia article on MDAC is informative:

The current version is 2.8 service pack 1, but the product has had many different versions and many of its components have been deprecated and replaced by newer Microsoft technologies. MDAC is now known as Windows DAC in Windows Vista.

XP is starting to remind me of Windows 98.

Lookout CAN run on Outlook 2007

Lookout for Outlook was the best full text Outlook search solution ever to run on XP. It wasn't half bad for handling file system search as well. The last version had some bugs, but it was fundamentally excellent.

Alas, Microsoft bought the company and killed the product. Windows Live Search (aka Windows Desktop Search) is what I use now, though I fear it has deep bugs that might be killing XP. Of course I have a completely plausible paranoid fear that every new Microsoft product and patch is designed to covertly degrade Windows XP (the noble Windows Live Writer team doesn't know about the changes being made to their code after check-in).

Microsoft wrote the encyclopedia on killing rival products by creating subtle and gross incompatibilities, and Microsoft's most hated enemy these days is Windows XP. The Dark Arts are never truly forgotten.

But I digress.

Joel Spolsky tells us that the original developer is finding ways to extend Lookout's lifespan:

Getting Lookout to run on Outlook 2007 again - Joel on Software: "...the original author of Lookout, Mike Belshe, had just posted instructions for getting Lookout to work on Outlook 2007."

Incidentally, Belshe has a blog. Today's post has him praising Windows Live Writer and cursing Microsoft's web sites. I love reading people who agree with me, so I'll add his blog to my feedlist.

Google Desktop Search bites the dust

I've posted frequently since January 2005 about various approaches to full text search in Windows XP in general and Outlook 2003 in particular.

My test environment is harsh. GBs of Outlook PST files. GBs of documents. Machine never rests. Hard drive always on the edge of meltdown.

The best solution, by an order of magnitude, was Lookout for Outlook. Fast, stable, and the bugs are manageable. Alas, it conflicted with some other Outlook Add-Ins (that environment reminds me of DOS TSR hell). Lookout also doesn't work in Outlook 2007 and it's definitely not supported anywhere, so I thought I needed to change. That was probably a mistake.

I used Yahoo Desktop Search for a while, but it was increasingly buggy and Yahoo finally abandoned it. It reverted back to X1 but it was even buggier when I tried their version.

Recently I decided Windows Desktop Search was my only option. It was slow and sucked performance, but it did all I needed and it incorporated Lookout's search syntax (see the help file). Unfortunately, my work machine has been possessed lately.

I'd removed about everything I could think of to try to stabilize my system, so it was time to remove WDS and try the only remaining contender Google Desktop Search.

Yech. This is what I wrote when I uninstalled it:

... I don't have enough control over indexing behavior. I don't have enough search syntax control - esp. for outlook tasks vs. email search. It was WAY slow to do a search against my multi-GB Outlook archives. It doesn't treat folders as first class search objects...

So now what do I do? I could buy a MacBook Pro and run XP in a VM, but Spotlight won't search PST files.

I need full text search - esp. of PST files.

I'm going to try Lookout again; I've gotten rid of most of my Outlook plug-ins / add-ins anyway.

Gee whiz, I miss my home OS X machines. I know people complain about Vista, but I'm not a great fan of any Microsoft products at the moment (though my problems, to be fair, may be hardware related). Even my beloved Windows Live Writer is buggier at the 1.0 release than it was in the last two beta versions!

Update 11/16/07: Joe Cheng (see comment) noted I hadn't submitted my WLW bug reports. They're really not awful, but they stood out relative to the perfection of the last beta. One is certainly a bug -- the category/tag names can be truncated randomly (last few characters are missing). The other two I need to prove are really bugs, which is a bit tough since my Dell laptop is definitely flaky.

I'm going to be more careful going forward about what I call a bug ...

Update 11/16/07b: The regressions (bugs) will soon be history. In the meantime don't use the Post to Weblog as Draft feature with Blogger.

XP desktop and Outlook 2003 search: RIP Lookout, GDS, and YDS/X1

It's over. The big guy won.

About 3-4 years ago there were at least five serious contenders for full-text search of Outlook and the Windows file system. The best of the desktop search tools in early 2005 was a relabeled version of "X1" distributed as "Yahoo Desktop Search". Next was Google Desktop Search, though it was a distant second. Microsoft's search solution was weak.

On the Outlook front there was one great solution: Lookout for Outlook.

Microsoft bought Lookout, Google kept on going, Yahoo gave up, the others vanished. Now, finally, Microsoft has integrated the majority of Lookout's capabilities into a revised version of their desktop full text search tool. The result is very impressive.

I've been using WDS for a few weeks now, and at long last I'm removing Lookout for Outlook from my system. It hung on a very long time. I've removed X1/YDS from home and work, it was getting increasingly flaky with each Microsoft system patch (some things never change).

Eventually Microsoft will decide it's time to move their corporate customers to Vista and WDS/XP will die, but for now it rules.

Recommended, but as is usual with Microsoft these days, there are some caveats:

• Many of the Microsoft web pages referring to WDS are obsolete and have bad links.
• There are two ways to install. One installs only Windows Desktop Search, but no IE or Outlook toolbars. The other installs Windows Live Toolbar into IE and a separate Outlook toolbar. Windows Live Toolbar is also used to host my favorite blog writer. I recommend the second install, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were somewhat different applications.
• Toolbar installation into Outlook can be problematic. See the help links on the post-install page.
• Be sure to look at the help file (hallelujah, it's the OLD style Windows help) and look at the keyboard shortcusts and advanced operators such as "has:attachment", "before 10/1/2007", "filename:fred", "store:outlook", "kind:tasks", etc.
• Use the keyboard shortcut: windows-shift-F.

PS. Recently Google has sued to facilitate replacing Vista's search with GDS. Microsoft must be smiling about that. This is one battle Google isn't going to win.

gSyncit and SyncMyCal: not compatible with Lookout for Outlook

I'd tried SyncMyCal at home and work for gCal synchronization with Outlook, but it crashed Outlook.

I then tried gSyncIt. This time it installed, but Lookout reported that "another Outlook Plugin has installed an unofficial version of the Outlook libraries which breaks Lookout".

Sigh. Lookout may have been euthenized by Microsoft but I absolutely depend on it. I've never seen anything else half as good, including Microsoft's "replacement" windows desktop search.

I'll uninstall gSyncIt and try reinstalling Lookout. The gSyncIt install was suspiciously amateurish anyway (an installer named setup.exe?!), and I wonder if it really did install a hacked version of the Outlook libraries. Not to mention the lack of documentation.

One plus to this, I'm now reasonably sure it was a Lookout/SyncMyCal clash that crashed Outlook at work.

I'll have to wait and see what else comes up. Google's help file more or less promises a sync solution from them. I probably need to give up on Lookout (it's not compatible with 2007 anyway), but I'm not in any hurry to do so. I'd be in more of a hurry if I had more confidence that there was a great Outlook/gCal sync solution available.

Gmail advanced search operators

These advanced search operators are well worth using: Gmail: Help Center - How do I use Advanced Search?. They're similar to Lookout (for Outlook)'s operators.

Thanks allblue.

Problems with antivirus software: full text indexing

I love full text indexing. I use Lookout for Outlook and Yahoo Desktop Search on XP, and Spotlight (of course) on OS X.

The OS X experience is pretty much perfect -- especially compared to the XP story. Full text indexing on XP has all kinds of performance and usability issues, but the worst appear to be related to antiviral software

I can't find much about this on a google search, just hints that suggest I'm not the only one to notice this. The minor problem is that the antiviral software wastes cycles searching the text indices (files need to be exempted from av and backup). The big problem is that some antiviral software really trashes file i/o (I disable it when doing heavy duty database work), and full text indexing causes massive file i/o. So the combo on antiviral s/w and index building can bring a single CPU XP system to its knees.

Mercifully I run my OS X systems without that vile antiviral software, so I don't run into problems there.

I think this may be one of the reasons that Microsoft decided to take over the antiviral business. It really does have to be built into the OS in such a way that it interoperates with full text search -- in particular exempt some file i/o operations from the antiviral tax.

Lookout for Outlook 1.3.0

Lookout for Outlook was one of the best pieces of productivity software ever created for the Windows platform. It makes Outlook, one of the shoddiest and crummiest piles of code ever sold, actually work.

Microsoft bought it and it disappeared. Allegedly MSN search has some of it.

I use version 1.2.8 dozens of times a day. By chance I see there was a quiet update to 1.3.0 last February -- almost a year ago. Worth trying.

Update 1/11/06: Hmm. I think 1.3.0 is not rebuilding my indices every hour as its supposed to. Alas, I fear I did this update once before -- with similar consequences. I withdraw my recommendation. I guess 1.2.8 is as good as it's going to get.

Reasons to install Google Desktop and thus Google Desktop search ...

Yahoo Desktop Search, when it doesn't crash and burn, is still the best full text indexing and search tool for XP (I so wish Microsoft hadn't bought and killed "Lookout for Outlook". Google Desktop, and thus Googe Desktop Search, however, is getting very, very interesting. The Plug-In modules are getting clever enough that they significantly increase the value of the product. Consider this one ...

Google Desktop Plug-in: HDDlife plug-in for Google Desktop

Worried about a hard drive failure? Get HDDlife - a real-time hard drive monitoring utility with malfunction protection and data loss prevention features. This hard drive inspector is an advanced proactive hard drive failure detection system that manages all of your hard drive risks. HDDlife runs in the background constantly monitoring your disks. It alerts you about possible hard disk problems before they happen and displays a disk health indicator in the Google Desktop Sidebar.

Google Desktop Incorporates a blend of Launchbar and Spotlight

Google Desktop 2.0 is big disappointing.

Update 8/24: Even bigger disappointment. After it finally built my indices (took days) I tried it out. I learned that:

1. It doesn't match on folder names. In other words, to GoD folders are invisible annoyances. ARGGHHH. The fools, the fools. This one just bit the dust.
2. It took forever to build the index, and you can't relocate it to a non-backed up drive without an unsupported utility.
3. Lookout search works, but I couldn't contrain what things were indexed and I couldn't restrict search to particular object types (tasks, etc).
   

I'm back to Yahoo Desktop! and Lookout for Outlook (now a zombie -- no further development going on post-Microsoft acquisition). I may try a look at MSN search sometime but I fear it doesn't include enough of Lookout's capabilities to be worth a switch.

Update: Biggest disappointment -- I can't find a keyboard shortcut so I can search and execute without a mouse. I'm sure one will be added shortly!

One of the most interesting features, however, may be a blend between OS X Launchbar (my favorite must have OS X utility) and Spotlight (which I'm still trying to find a use for -- if I didn't use Launchbar it would be more useful). That blend is precisely what I've been missing. They probably haven't incorporated, however, Launchbar's brilliant machine learning algorithms. (BTW, why doesn't Launchbar wrap Spotlight? Update 8/24: I'm told it will!!)

Quick Find makes launching applications and searching your desktop easy and fast. From within any application, just type a few letters or words into Sidebar's search box and you'll see the top results pop up instantly. You can use Quick Find to launch applications without having to deal with the Start menu; for example, if you have Microsoft Word installed, you can launch it by just typing 'wor' into the Sidebar search box and selecting 'Microsoft Word' in the list of results that appears. You can also use Quick Find from the Deskbar and Floating Deskbar, which are described in a separate section.

A few quick notes:

1. It's supposed to index tasks, calendar items, etc. We'll see. They mean Outlook but I wish they'd say so.
2. You can index networked drives and non C:\ drives. That's big, this was a major limitation of 1.0.
3. The Sidebar is an application deployment environment (aka an 'operating system' in which one can install other applications. Shades of Konfabulator and OS X Widgets. This is a shared desktop that can be accessed via any XP box (but NOT a Mac -- peculiar that Google should be driving their audience to Microsoft's platform)
   
4. You still can't move or relocate your index file, so you have to explicitly avoid backing it up. Annoying.
5. GMail indexing is most interesting. In my case, makes up for not indexing Eudora.
6. The deskbar does replace the Start menu.
   

Yahoo! Desktop Search (X1) review by PC Magazine

Yahoo! Desktop Search review by PC Magazine

They liked it. It's quite a good review, they make some of the same points I made.

Lookout for Outlook + YDS covers what I need at work. At home I need to search Eudora. Looks like YDS doesn't do that, but X1 commercial does. So X1 + Lookout together would do the job. I'll have to see if X1 will offer an upgrade path at less than list price.

Yahoo! Desktop (X1) is the new champion

Yahoo! Desktop Search Beta [updated 1/18/05]

Until recently AOL/Copernic was my choice on the XP platform for file search (not Outlook, for that I use Lookout). Copernic isn't ideal however.

Now X1 freebie, better known as Yahoo Desktop Search (YDS) has taken over. Roughly following the same format as my previous Copernic review, here are my comments. Bottom line: it smokes everything else.

Some key features with some caveats :

1. You can configure location of the indices. I store them in a folder that I exclude from backup. You really don't want to backup search indices. All my various search indices tools store files in this folder. The X1 index is 400 MB for a 14GB dataset, but much of my data are in large non-indexed databases.
   
2. You can control readily what folders are indexed. I turned off Outlook search since I use Lookout. NOTE: X1 does NOT appear to index Outlook Task or Note folders.
   
3. It indexes PDF and a wide variety of data types. You can preview files within X1. Big feature. It even includes viewers for obscure applications, like MindManager.
   
4. You constrain your search results by additional quick filters such as data, result type, substring on file name. You can readily sort search results by the usual metadata (file name, date, etc) and by file PATH.
   
5. You can tell it not to index files over a certain size (I used 10MB).
6. You can control when it builds the indices. However, control is limited. Indexing is not all that smart, since my machine is often active (backup, maintenance, etc) the index wasn't getting built. I had to turn off the default option of waiting for an inactive machine. The index did get built and it wasn't a big performance hit. You can't specify a time range for index building.
   
7. You can't index network shares with Yahoo's licensed free version. The commercial version of X1 does this. I may buy the commercial version for my home.
8. It indexes folder names and it treats folders as first class searchable items. You can constrain a search to limit it to folders. This is a HUGE advantage over Copernic.
9. When you find an item, you can right-click to open it in the enclosing folder.
   

Some defects:

1. No fundamental defects for file search so far. Big advantage over Copernic!
2. Toolbar is kind of dumb. I don't care about Outlook searching (I use Lookout for that) but those items still appear on the toolbar. They also appear on the desktop toolbar and take up a lot of room. However you can specify "Files" as the default to search (RMB, properties) on the desktop toolbar then hide everything but the data entry field.
3. YECH (Update 1/18/05). You can't get rid of the Yahoo toolbar in Outlook. Sure you can remove it, but it returns the next time you restart Outlook. This is very annoying, because (see next point) X1 is a crummy tool for searching Outlook. I have a longstanding problem with toolbars in XP that show up unwanted -- I'm still fighting an idiotic Adobe Acrobat 4.0 toolbar that's infested my OS for years. I think I have to figure out where these damned things live -- problem is I think they can live in many places in the OS.
   
4. NOT a good choice for Outlook search. I use Lookout for that, but this would be a huge problem if I dependend on X1. It doesn't index notes and tasks! I didn't notice if it indexed Outlook attachments, didn't care enough.
5. Minor defect: it doesn't seem to understand abstract entities, like "desktop" or "documents" -- only physical directories.
6. It doesn't "smart rank" search results (ie. explicity metadata > directory match > file name match > etc), though in practice the rapid sorting of results and subsearch capabilities mean I don't miss this too much.
7. It doesn't, apparently, search Eudora mail archives. For that you need the non-Yahoo version of this.
8. It doesn't search mounted drives. Again, the non-Yahoo X1 version of the app does this.
9. Update 6/30: It ignores basic windows metadata (subject, author, keyword) entered via document properties dialogs. It ignores PDF metada entered within Acrobat. It doesn't index text comments on Acrobat documents. All of these things make YDS a poor choice for indexing scanned documents. Quite disappointing, actually.
   

My configuration

1. Limited search to the folder that contains my data and the desktop folder. (Removed all other folders, for non-removables set to ignore via "modify" button.)
2. Moved indices to my "Cache" folder (no backup of this folder).
3. Max file size to index 10MB.

Desktop search: why it has to be much smarter

Faughnan's Tech: Copernic/AOL: current leader in the sponsored (freebie) Windows desktop search race

I keep this blog primarily for my own uses as a place to keep notes on topics. Occasionally I do make editorial comments, but I was surprised recently to learn that at least two people read my posts on Copernic. I even replied to a comment explaining why I haven't yet bothered with MSN search.

So although I don't expect much readership, I'll expound a bit here on my thoughts on desktop search. If nothing else I'll link back to this in future.

I think desktop search has to be smarter than most people think -- at least for the 0.01% of the world that resembles me. (Caveat: I'm so far off the spectrum of users that no product manager with experience would use me as a representative user. On the other hand, I may resemble a "department" of typical users.)

I have thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of documents distributed across local and networked drives and, now, Blogger repositories. They go back about 15 years. I have maybe 10,000 images and they're growing fast. I have over 4GB of email in Outlook repositories and 2GB in Eudora. I have spreadsheets, databases, etc.

"Dumb" full-text search of my repository just returns noise: thousands of hits.

On the other hand, Lookout works great.

Why?

Because I use Lookout to search only my Outlook repository. And that repository has LOTS of rich metadata. There are date entries, subject entries, people entries, item-type (contact, task) etc. Lookout provides ways to constrain searches by metadata. It seems to use the metadata in its ranking (Subject >> text). It allows me to omit indexing attachments -- which adds more noise than value. I learn to edit email subjects/titles in Outlook (secret tip: this is very easy to do) before I throw my email in the Save folder (I don't use any other email folders). I can add an optional layer of on-the-fly metadata by adding categories. (Very poorly supported in Outlook otherwise this would work better.)

Desktop search has very little metadata to go on. Yeah, NTFS has LOTS of rich metadata support -- but it's ignored by almost all applications. Microsoft synchronizes (awkardly) Office document metadata with NTFS metadata, but even in Office support is weak. The workflow for adding metadata, even document titles, is very poor.

The biggest source of filesyste meaning-rich metadata on a PC is the folder/path name -- even more than the file name. I do better using a self-built kludged implementation of Norton Change Directory than I do with Copernic or any other filesystem indexing method. That works because I try to make my folder names descriptive.

Smart desktop search for someone as atypical as me needs to be smart about metadata. It needs to value strings in path names more than strings buried on page 50 of a 200 page document. It needs to value "Title" strings more than deep tex strings. It needs to value file name strings. It needs to rank recent above old. Heck, I could make a longer list (anyone want to pay me :-?).

Search results need to be very quick to sort and (me only -- subsort) and to allow additional subqueries (ok, I'm very data oriented.)

I think OS X Tiger search is going to knock the socks off the PC products I've seen so far -- including Google's disappointing offering. Reading their developer notes, they clearly understand the problem -- and, more importantly, they plan to deliver on their understanding.

Yeah, I know Microsoft has great stuff in the labs (Longhorn, etc) -- but so did Xerox 20 years ago.

Of course, as noted above, I'm really extreme. On the other hand, a departmental group of 10-20 people may have similar needs to mine. So someone building a desktop search solution for someone like me is building something that may work in an organization.

Copernic/AOL: current leader in the sponsored (freebie) Windows desktop search race

Copernic Desktop Search - The Search Engine for Your PC

Updated 1/5/05 with, unsurprisingly, some more of the negatives.
Update 5/10/05: I think Yahoo Desktop Search (X1 freebie) is the best PC desktop search tool -- except it doesn't index Eudora. X1 commercial does -- for $80. There was rumor of a Google Desktop Search plugin, but it's not there yet. So, for home, where I use Eudora still on my PC, I'm going to try Copernic 1.5 again.

Introduction

I really like Lookout for searching and managing Outlook. I'm sticking with that one for now. I tried Google desktop search and a few others, including Lookout's desktop search -- didn't like 'em.

Since MSN search uses Microsoft's built-in indexing, which I don't like, I haven't tried it.

I think Yahoo/X1 will be interesting, but it's not a freebie yet.

Copernic/AOL is my latest. It looks good at first glance, but it has some fundamental deficits.

Some key features:

1. You can configure location of the indices. I store them in a folder that I exclude from backup, including backup via ConnectedTLM. You really don't want to backup search indices. All my various search indices tools store files in this folder.
2. You can control readily what folders are indexed. I turned off Outlook search since I use Lookout.
3. It indexes PDF.
4. You can tell it not to index very large files.
5. You can control when it builds the indices, including time of day scheduling. It will do low level background indexing (not a default). Index builds seem very fast and "smart".
6. If you map a network share to a drive letter, it appears that it can index that drive. (Performance may be poor, I haven't pursued this capability as I don't need it at work.)
7. It indexes folder names. (A major flaw in Lookout 1.2's file system search.)

Some fundamental defects:

1. It's "stupid" in how it does search rankings. In particular it doesn't use NTFS file metadata it doesn't weight metadata >> folder name >> file name >> document content and it doesn't differentially weight aspects of documents (titles, early text, etc) .
   (One of the reasons Lookout works so well for email search is that there's so much reich metadata available in Outlook. The typical PC document filestore has very little metadata. I'm very interested in the 2005 OS X Tiger search because of the way it uses metadata.)
   
2. It doesn't return a folder or directory as a search result. The only search results are files. This throws away a lot of the intelligence and metadata that may exist in a file store.
   
3. You can't search within a result set easily.
4. You can't sort result sets by metadata (file size, type, date created, date modified, etc).
5. The Help and Submit Bug buttons are broken. There's no documentation.
   

My configuration

1. Limited search to My Documents folder only. (Removed all other folders, for non-removables set to ignore via "modify" button.)
2. Moved indices to my "Cache" folder (no backup).
3. Update index daily at 1am.
4. Max file size to index 10MB (I may shrink this further)
5. Various other small tweaks to enhance performance.

Conclusion

It's the best of a bad bunch, but I'm not impressed. I'll compare it to X1 when Yahoo launches it. For now I'm staying with Copernic (it beats Google Desktop!) but I still get more value from a directory string search I hacked together that emulates the immensely underappreciated Norton Change Directory feature of Norton Commander and Norton Utilities @ 1989.

A feeble review of desktop search tools

Desktop Search Tools

It's a pretty feeble review, but, surprisingly, there's not much I've seen yet. I guess noone does software reviews any more.

The list omitted my favorite Outlook search tool - Lookout. Lookout can be configured to index the file system as well as Outlook.

There's more subtlety to making full text search useful than most people think.

Getting Things Done and Managing Email with Lookout for Outlook

GTD: The Fallow's summary

A month or so ago I posted about the Fallow's summary on GTD. (see link). Here's a revised update. (PS. Too bad Blogger doesn't support trackback links!)

Getting Things Done (http://www.davidco.com/).
See also:

Atlantic Online | July/August 2004 | Organize Your Life! | James Fallows
David Allen's book. (This is a bit dated, he needs a new edition.)

1. If you can do it in two minutes, just do it.
2. Get everything out of your head. Appointments, tasks, notes, contacts -- get it into one place (eg. Outlook).
3. Tasks have three important relationships:
the minimal context needed for the next action (ex: anywhere, phone, desk, computer, network, office ..)
the project(s) that contains the task
date of next action
4. Tasks always have a next action. Identifying and executing 'next actions' is critical.
5. Record tasks/ideas at time they are recognized.
6. Weekly review of about one hour. (This takes me at least 2 hours but I'm trying to speed my review.)
7. Tasks don't have priorities. (Personally I use priorities on tasks but Allen assumes if a task is scheduled then it should be done. I see his point.)

How I handle email (using Lookout)

(Note this works for any email solution that supports full text indexing. I think it would work for OS X Mail in Panther, it will definitely work in Tiger.

Lookout for Outlook:

1. Install Lookout. Note this is an early product and has some rough edges. I force a complete index rebuild every night. Still, value is enormous. It has not affected my system stability.

2. Read message. Follow GTD protocol as above (see book too). Then either:
- delete
- create task and save
- save

3. If a task is needed, I create a task by dragging the message to the Outlook task icon. Outlook creates a task that incorporates the message content (text only).

4. If the message is to be saved I
- edit the subject line to be more descriptive of the message
- rarely I edit the message text or subject line and add terms I'd use for a Lookout search.
- drop the message in my "Save" folder (that's it). I don't use subfolders anymore and don't spend time filing anything.

Update 3/2/05: This related article talks about environmentally-induced ADD.

X1.com -- search files and outlook -- a review

X1 instantly searches files & email. For Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and Netscape Mail.

I took another look at this since Fallows wrote of it recently in the NYT. It's a product of Bill Gross, a Caltech undergrad classmate of mine. He made his initial fortune on a Lotus Notes module (long forgotten).

It's not quite ready for primetime. Some odd bugs and behaviors. Sent my CPU usage through the roof. Every time I hit the letter 'e' when searching in the file tag it jumped to the email search tag!!

Now it's quieting down after I tweaked the options:

1. Turned off all outlook/email/contacts indexing. Lookout works great for Outlook, and X1 doesn't search notes or tasks (meaning it's not useful for me).

2. Removed all the quick key entries for email. That stopped the 'e' problem, so now I can search for terms containing the exotic letter 'e'.

3. Restricted indexing to a subset of directories and to files under 2MB. In some directories limited indexing to file and folder name. If nothing else X1 may be fast way to locate directories and files.

4. X1 ONLY does stem searching. It doesn't do substring searching. This is a reasonable compromise for document indexing, but for finding folders/directories substring searching is feasible and necessary. So it's not as good for navigating directories as WCD (for example).

5. I need more control over what NOT to index, preferably using regex to define directory paths and files to exclude. X1 is indexing all of the FrontPage index files.

Given the above it might be useable. I have a LOT of content to index.

Lookout: search Outlook email

Lookout email search for Microsoft Outlook - Lookout Software

---

I may REALLY come to like this. It's early to tell and I'm using a beta 1.10 release version. It's only $30, free until release.

Things I like:

1. Very simple, but if you read the manual there's a nice search syntax available.
2. Very, very, fast indexing.
3. Complete control of what gets indexed across multiple PST files. Since I keep very little on the exchange server (makes Palm sync actually work instead of causing endless pain) this was critical to me.

Wow.

Another Google indexing and search tool

Lookout email search for Microsoft Outlook - Lookout Software