Basic Directory Search

[chrisa52]

Hey guys. . .I've tried going through the help file, maybe you can help me with this (probably) dumb question.

Background: I moved several directories I had to a portable drive from a hard drive on my laptop.
I then had to change, ie. add the new search directory to the FARR Search folders list.

For some reason, I can not get FARR to find documents or other items in the (new) directories on the portable drive.

Under Options
In the Search folders list I have F:\Doc*
(I have F:\Documents, F:\Documentation, F:\Documentation-Lic all with sub-directories that I want searched).

I type something like 'font purchases' (there is a Font Purchases.xlsx file) and I get NO HITS. . . I'm just frustrated as heck. . .this was a really useful function and I can't seem to figure it out. If I can't get it to work, I'm just going to stop running FARR.

Search Behavior has the following checked.

x Stop search on Regex aliais match

x remove missing items from alias history
x remove duplicate links .....

x Score non-contiguous matches .....
x Disable Non-contiguous matching .....

I'm running V 2.87.03. ..

I'm sure it's some easy thing to fix, I just can't seem to find it in the documentation or looking around. It all worked fine until I created the new directories. 

Thanks in advance.

cma

[mouser]

no reason it shouldn't work, sounds like you have the basic idea right.. must be something simple that is tripping you up.

some thoughts:

• make sure the checkboxes checked for your new directories on the Search Folders tab
• make sure you haven't specified any keyword modifier for the directories
• try dragging them up to the top of the search order to have them searched first
• make sure you set search depth to -1 for each of these, to recurse into these directories

[chrisa52]

Thanks for the quick response.

All the items you listed, were already as you suggested. . .

All I've done is just add directories, I'm not very fancy right now. . .no modifier keywords, no exclusions etc. . . I'm, thinking of just re-installing & starting from scratch.

[mouser]

don't do that.. there is no point.  if you wanted to you could delete the farr .ini settings file which would be the same.

ok two more things:

• When you start typing stuff to search for, DOES it appear to be searching -- see the status bar below, it should tell you where it is searching.  if it appears not to be, then maybe it is hitting on some alias or plugin that is making it stop early.
• Email me your FindAndRunRobot.ini file (in program directory on win xp or in documents\donationcoder\FindAndRunRobot on vista/win7) and i'll see what might be wrong ([email protected]).

[mouser]

After talking to chrisa via email, it seems the problem was a misunderstanding about how you can specify directories added to the Search Folder tab.  Chris was adding one entry that said "F:\Doc*" and expecting FARR to search all matching wildcard directories.  But FARR does not do that, it needs you to specify each (top level) folder explicitly.