Using FindOnClick: Expert Search
The Expert mode provides many more ways to define and filter your search as compared with the Easy Search mode. A screenshot follows of the Main Expert Mode tab:
The Filename Filter
For a guide and examples of how to use the Filename Filter please read the section of this help file named FindOnClick Easy Search.
Searching Contents
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Note that to search the contents of files the entire file must be read. This means it is very time consuming and slow, so it is advisable to only use this feature with a small number of files. |
In common with using the Easy Search Mode you can search the contents of files. For example, you may want to only list files that contain your email address:
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Note that when using the Easy Search mode searches are not case sensitive (for example, the meaning of abc is the same as ABC or Abc). |
In Expert Mode the additional content filters are available:
The Case Sensitive option allows the user to specify a case sensitive word or phrase to further filter by content.
Scan All Files will scan any file on your Windows drive: hidden files, Windows system files, and program files etc. Checking this option will increase the length of time search results are returned.
Search by Regular Expression allows the advanced user to search a string that describes or matches a set of strings according to certain syntax rules, providing a concise and flexible means for identifying text of interest. FindOnClick uses Perl style Regular Expressions.
Deep Search will search a file using different text encodings (ASCII, ANSI, Unicode (LE), Unicode (BE) and UTF-8). FindOnClick will try to determine the encoding of a file and search as appropriate, but this will only be relevant to some kinds of text files. With deep search enabled it will try all encodings. Note that it will increase the search time but you are more likely to find files containing the search text.
Search Paths
You have the option to limit your search to a specified path on your drive. To add a new drive, path, or UNC network path (e.g. \\server\share\path\) click the Add path link next to Search paths:
A new Browse to Folder window will open. Enter the path of your choice into the Folder edit box and click the OK button:
Alternatively you can select the path directly in the folder tree. You can remove paths by selecting them, right clicking and then clicking Remove Selected from the right-click menu:
The Path filter lets you define what the path must match to be included in the search. For example, to only list files inside the folders that have the words documents or docs in their path you would enter:
documents docs
or
documents OR docs
or
*documents* *docs*
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The filename is not part of the path. Review the Filename filter section on the FindOnClick Easy Search page. |
As per the Windows wildcard standard the asterisk (*) matches zero or more of any characters and a question mark (?) matches any character. Here are some more examples of using the Path filter:
\source\ |
This will list folders named source at the top level (e.g. C:\source\) and any files in that folder, but not any sub-folders. |
\source\* |
This will list folders named source at the top level (e.g. C:\source\) and any files or sub-folders in that folder. |
*\source\ |
This will list folders that have a sub-folder called source (e.g. C:\abc\source\) and any files in that folder, but not any sub-folders. |
*\source\* |
This will list folders that have a sub-folder called source (e.g. C:\abc\source\) and any files and sub-folders in that folder. |
Using search by extension you can specify the types of files you want included in the search results. For example, you may only want to include Microsoft Office documents, or exclude programs.
The extensions must be specified in a comma-delimited list. For example:
.doc, .xls, .ppt
You can also use wildcard characters (* and ?) in the extensions. For example:
.*~*
File Kinds
You can select certain file kinds to search for (or not to search for):
The File Kind is a list of file types united by some common purpose. For example Pictures kind can have .jpg or .gif type, but all those types have the same kind: image files. You can also use a combination of search by kinds and extensions to narrow the search results to certain file types.
You can edit File Kinds from both the Expert Search window and the Options menu.
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