I am curious to know if anybody has found any program, pay or not, that works well, indexes all MS Office documents, including PSTs, PDFs, inside compressed archives, etc.
-tinjaw
I agree with Darwin about the fact that X1 is pretty good (by far the most feature full Desktop search software out there). Copernic is probably its 2nd closest competitor, followed by Archivarius and a bunch of others. Like I siad elsewhere, I use X1 (mostly) in conjunction with Archivarius.
Unfortunaterly, yes, X1 doesn't always behave properly, but if you can determine what its weaknesses are and the context where they’re disclosed, you can avoid some of them.
I do have the outlook/windows standby related X1crashes problem once in while. Fortunately, it has never corrupted my PST file or anything else (and so I just have to restart X1, which takes a couple seconds). I don’t know why. Maybe my PST file is not yet big enough (635mb) ??? Anyway : that crashing problem can be avoided if you close Outlook each time you put your computer on standby… I never do it, so it just crashes.
Also well yes, X1 does freeze under certain conditions (e.g. : when viewing certain huge files with complex tables, etc. — hundreds of pages). But it happens only when these options are turned on : “Highlight search terms” and “normal”/”preview” views. So, whenever certain files/searches cause problems, I switch to the “draft view” and unselect the “Highlight search terms”; then, I just use ctrl+F to search in the preview window, if I need to, and F3 to navigate from one hightlighted term to the text. That’s one workaround.
Besides — and even it seems related to the previous problem, it’s a different one — X1 seems to have problems indexing huge documents
past a certain number of pages (well probably more a certain number of words)… All my problematic documents are not indexed past p. 360. I.e. : X1 can’t hightlight or find terms past this "relative" limit; e.g. : if I happen to search for a term that’s at the end of one of these big files, chances are X1 won’t see it. Weird.
X1 takes also more resources than many other DS : on my system, it’s always taking around (more or less, (if I add all related processes : textExtractor.exe, X1systray.exe, X1service, X1FileMonitor and X1.exe) 30mb RAM, and is often consuming between 1 and 5% of CPU power when resting in the tray (and more, of course, when it’s indexing or when its main window is opened).
So I’d like to use Archivarius more, but… I find its interface and searching options inferior (and. what’s up with the weird help section and the limited keyboard navigation???? — not to mention the sloooow Outlook indexing). It DOES index very thoroughly, but it’s harder to find the info. (In comparison, X1’s column filtering system is top notch, the GUI is very flexible, the keyboard navigation is pretty easy, and the fact you can save any search and organize them in folders is great. Outlook support is also amazing. Sometimes I even find myself working on Outlook from inside X1! It’s that easy. Drag and drop support is also very good)
Copernic is nice too. It’s usually lighter, faster and more responsive than X1. But the outlook support is not as great (no tasks or calendar events), and it’s not as exhaustive, doesn’t have as many features, and… YES… it
does miss some files (Darwin, I must agree with your wife). Also, it misses the “comments” in word and pdf files. On the bright side it indexes files past the “X1 limit”… But it
won’t be able to show the searched terms passed that limit!!!! The only indexer that works perfectly well with huge files (+ word comments and pdf notes) is Archivarius — that’s why I bought it (apart from it’s lightness, it’s the only reason…).
Ok sorry for that long and probably a bit incoherent post. Maybe someone will find it useful.
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