File is there, can't find it

[Smith-Corona]

hi,

having some frustration when I set FARR off in search of a file which I know is there, but which it fails to find. I'm trying to see what parameters in the settings might be affecting this. The file - let's call it findthis.xls - is in My Documents, 2 levels down (ie it goes My Documents\folder1\folder2\findthis.xls. My Documents is in the Search Folders list. I have recursion set to 4, just to be on the safe side. I've put My Documents to the top of the list, and it has a high rating compared to other folders. Even typing in the exact title of the file --> "Found 0 results in 3 seconds".

This is all becoming a bit artificial - I know exactly where the file is and could open it in a moment - but I would really like to find out why FARR can't find it. Also, once it is open, it will be in the history, and I'm pretty sure FARR will be able to find it then (I have My Recent Docs in the list, with a pretty high priority).

One other thing - I have a keyword modifier for My Documents, and if i "force" FARR to look there by using it, again I'm pretty sure it will find it. But I'd like to know why it doesn't find it in the normal way.

Any suggestions?

[mouser]

hmm.. try setting recursion to -1 to make sure that isn't the problem.
you could turn on the option in Display Options tab to "Show search subdir" so you could check statusbar as it searches to see what it is finding.
and then lastly maybe try creating a simple named file like mytest.txt in that directory and try to find that, to see if there is something about that filename that is confusing it.

[Smith-Corona]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll give these a go. I tried making a new file in a directory 4 levels deep, also in My Documents, and as long as the recursion level was set properly (see below) FARR found it OK. But still not this other file.

On the subject of recursion: -1 seems to be the default setting and was what I had it at previously, when it was failing to find the file. I puzzled over this: why is it a minus figure? I guessed this meant that to include two levels you should set it to -2. Tried that and it just changed it back to -1. Then I tried positive numbers which seemed to work. If 0 is no recursion, why isn't that the default? It's not very clear.

[d4ni]

I am pretty sure 0 means only the root directory (= no recursion), while -1 would search all subdirectories recursively with no limit. -2 would not do anything and would probably default to -1.