Author Topic: What is the currently best Desktop Search software? (Read 809648 times)

tomos · « **Reply #200 on:** October 31, 2007, 08:23 AM »

How are HTML emails and attachments stored in Thunderbird? How can you archive off older email to stop folders becoming unmanageable - are there tools built in to do it?
-Carol Haynes (October 31, 2007, 07:58 AM)

good questions.
I was coincidentally just this morning figuring out how to (bulk) delete attachments from sent mail

came across this

Technical details
Thunderbird stores the whole e-mail together, including the attachment, in MIME format in the mailbox files in your Profile folder - Thunderbird. It does not un-encode and store the attachment outside the mailbox file unless you save or detach it as described above. By contrast, the Eudora e-mail program automatically un-encodes and detaches the attachment when you receive the e-mail; it always stores attachments as separate files.

External links

* AutoZip Attachments extension
* Attachment Extractor extension
* Copy Attachments to Clipboard extension
* Slideshow extension

re archiving I'm curious!

EDIT: kindof overlapped with Ralphs post there

Ralf Maximus · « **Reply #201 on:** October 31, 2007, 08:35 AM »

Oh, and I forgot to mention: Thunderbird does not bother me with silly "Are you sure you want to open this incredibly dangerous attachment?" prompts.

:-)

f0dder · « **Reply #202 on:** October 31, 2007, 10:47 AM »

Calling ThunderBird fast is wrong, imho - it has the same bloaty-slow startup feeling that FireFox has (I bet it's the whole XUL interface deal), and moving large amounts of messages between folders is slow - because of the retarded all-text MBOX format used.

Luckily, ThunderBird does do binary indexing of the mbox files, otherwise it would be unusable. The downside to this is that in the case TB decides to act all weird about your mbox files, you have to let it re-index them... which took ~15 minutes for a ~1.5gigabyte mbox file on a mid-end P4 system.

Don't get me wrong, I love the clean and easy TB interface, the filtering rules are strong enough, and the built-in anti-spam is also efficient enough, but it does weird things every now and then.

And the interface is pretty clean, I've moved four (more or less computer-illiterate) people from Outlook Express over to TB, and it works well for them - apart from those occasional hiccups.

PS: importing Outlook Express mailbox files into TB is fast, but importing contacts takes ages.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #203 on:** October 31, 2007, 10:55 AM »

The main problem (which is why I think I rejected it last time) is the lack of export options. The help pages make some suggestions (such as installing Netscape and moving all your mail to Netscape and then to Outlook Express - which is cumbersome to say the least) and there are a couple of commercial apps that can archive stuff - but there don't seem to be any addins to archive or move mail out of Thunderbird (the KB suggests one but the page pointed to is a dead link and searching extensions for the name yields nothing useful).

Ralf Maximus · « **Reply #204 on:** October 31, 2007, 11:17 AM »

Calling ThunderBird fast is wrong, imho - it has the same bloaty-slow startup feeling that FireFox has (I bet it's the whole XUL interface deal), and moving large amounts of messages between folders is slow - because of the retarded all-text MBOX format used.
-f0dder (October 31, 2007, 10:47 AM)

Yeah, I should have qualified that. STARTING ThunderBird takes the same amount of disk thrashing as any other app (Outlook springs to mind) especially if you have a bunch of TB add-ins installed, as I do.

But once it's running it's quite snappy. Even when background stuff is running, like filters or PopFile. I have four email accounts set up, two of which are GMail and HotMail, and even they query/download quickly.

I haven't noticed any lag when moving messages from folder to folder. It takes 2-3 seconds to move a coupla hundred emails from Junk to Trash, for instance. But I would think that's acceptable, given the amount of work.

The main problem (which is why I think I rejected it last time) is the lack of export options.
-Carol Haynes (October 31, 2007, 10:55 AM)

I found this page describing how to export from TB to Outlook Express, then from OE to Outlook. I also found some add-ins that automate the process, but they prove "incompatible" with my ragged-edge version of Firefox+TB.

True, it's cumbersome to export from TB-->OE-->Outlook, but that would be a one-time fall-back option if you decided TB sucks, right?

BTW, the Lightning scheduling add-in is quite nice, and makes me (almost) forget about Outlook. But if you prefer a more robust scheduling option, there exist add-ins to support Rainlander(sp?) and other dedicated apps.

FWIW I am not a rabid TB fan, just happy that I've got direct access to my email via text editor if things go kaboom. At one time I wanted to write something that would parse email, and Outlook kept getting in the way. Once my .PST files started to unravel that was the impetus to jump ship.

Curt · « **Reply #205 on:** October 31, 2007, 11:36 AM »

GDX, from today's Freeware World newsletter, for the Google fans:

* Google Desktop Extreme *

Google Desktop Extreme brings the power of Google search to your desktop -
with advanced features not available in the standard version. GDX begins
searching as soon as you start to type, returning results as fast as
possible - even faster than you can type. GDX also has auto-complete, so
your searches are remembered for quick access [...]

Download from:
http://www.all4you.d...p_Extreme-42653.html

Dormouse · « **Reply #206 on:** October 31, 2007, 02:18 PM »

I really dislike Outlook. I use it at work where there is no choice and all software is poor. I get out of problems at home by using more than one client. The diskspace isn't an issue, I don't have them all in use all of the time so CPU usage only occurs when I I specifically load them. It means I have backups available automatically and that I can search with a variety of programs. Historically I mainly used Courier. I now mostly use The Bat. I still keep Courier, I also use TB. If, for some reason, probably to do with syncing I neded to use Outlook then I will set it up. You may need to send yourself copies of your mails so that you have them available in all clients, but it does mean that you don't have to rely on programs being able to search Outlook.

alxwz · « **Reply #207 on:** October 31, 2007, 03:48 PM »

armando, Dormouse, yksyks:

Maybe some misunderstanding, I do not want to specifically look for folders (which is the case if I revert to a different app like DOpus Find, Locate32 etc. just for a search containing folder names) or use some of the procedures described for X1 or Exalead.

I just want folders to be treated like files or file contents: One search over everything (isn't this what desktop search is all about?), and it will find the a folder with the keyword in its name just like a file with the string in its name or its content.

I read from your replies that almost all programs won't do that.

CWuestefeld · « **Reply #208 on:** October 31, 2007, 04:15 PM »

Sorry to continue to hijack this thread for Outlook purposes.

I've argued with Carol in the past defending certain aspects of Outlook. However, I have to say that in the big picture I'm still quite dissatisfied with the product. I don't have the corruption problems that she has, but I've got others.

I have between 2-3 GB of messages stored from quite a long time period. With all of this data, its response is really getting sluggish.

And the sluggishness really reveals that even after this time, Outlook's threading model sucks. I really don't get why it needs to freeze the entire user interface when it's checking for new mail. When it's downloading new mail, I can't even scroll down a message that I'm reading at the time. And using the "Send to email" menu from other applications causes a message window to pop up that is modal over the Outlook application, so I can't read any other messages until I've finished writing that one.

I'm pretty fed up with Outlook, but the thing is, nothing else fills its shoes. It's shocking that for email and PIM functions, two types of apps that have been around since the dinosaurs, there's still nothing really good.

One project that looked promising to me is Chandler (http://chandlerproject.org/), but this is taking so long to deliver that I fear that we'll have evolved right along with the dinosaurs before it ever gets to a 1.0 release.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #209 on:** October 31, 2007, 08:28 PM »

A bit of light at the end of the Outlook tunnel!!! (Sorry guys I'll shut up about Outlook soon but it is intimately tied up with desktop search engines for me.).

I dropped an email to the developers of Neo Pro and got a response within a couple of hours (pretty good). The upshot is that they have not experienced Neo corrupting PST files but agreed that the MAPI interface may be the source of the problem. Their suggestion was to exit Outlook and then run the utility FIXMAPI.EXE (on my system there are copies in C:\WINDOWS\system32 and C:\WINDOWS\system32\dllcache) and finally reboot.

FIXMAPI doesn't appear to do anything (and I'd never heard of it before) but having done as they suggested I can now pound away at my PST file within Outlook and within Neo with no errors cropping up in the PST file as a result.

This is a bit of a result for me.

Regarding slugish behaviour - I used to experience that in Outlook XP but I don't experience it in Outlook 2003. Similarly I used to experience freezes when it downloaded email in Outlook XP but the only time I occasionally experience problems in Outlook 2003 is when I sync Hotmail folders (which I now do rarely). Maybe it would be worth your while uninstalling Outlook completely and reinstalling it again (your plugins, data and settings are retained).

The other approach is to reduce the size of your mail files - probably a good idea anyway for data security purposes. You can archive off emails using dates as a criteria and then have Outlook open multiple PST files so all your data is still instantly available and searchable but your active PST file (with the current Inbox) can be kept small.

I must admit I have spent part of today playing with Thunderbird and with a few addins (esp. Lightning) it is really quite usable as a calendar and task manager - and can do something Outlook doesn't - it can display Tasks in the calendar. The major drawback of Thunderbird for me is the lack of a simple method to archive your old emails and still easily access them within Thunderbird. It does integrate quite nicely with POPfile (you can display the extra header fields POPfile generates using an addin which means you can process POPfile (re)classification quickly from within Thunderbird). There are addins to to access Hotmail and Yahoo mail (and others) via POP which seem to work pretty well (although fiddly and unintuitive to set up). It has sensible methods for dealing with images in HTML mail so that you can trust mail for a single email or from a spefic address. Thunderbird's rules are adequate (though not as comprehensive as Outlook). All in all if you need a free email client Thunderbird is pretty darn good.

Strangely the calendar is supposed to import Outlook calendars as CSV files but I'm damned if I can get it to work.

Here are the extensions I was using:

For anyone that isn't aware Thunderbird gives USENET access and can be set as the default system news reader. I must admit I found the interface for the usenet reader rather clunky and a bit disorganised and confusing.

It also icludes an RSS reader too.

Armando · « **Reply #210 on:** November 03, 2007, 12:58 AM »

Thanks for the info Carol.

I still haven't got the guts to install Neo Pro. But you seem to have found a solution to your woes.
Have you thought off using sonething like Zoot or Ultra Recall to manage your emails?

I'm considering these as potential solutions. Zoot has amazing searching features... You could try the beta and import some pst files into it. I don't know if it can import separate pst files though... Maybe.

yksyks · « **Reply #211 on:** November 03, 2007, 04:18 AM »

alxwz:

Copernic highlights the search term in folder names, Exalead doesn't. None of these finds the folder by its name, sorry. I agree, it's an inconsistency.

Armando · « **Reply #212 on:** November 03, 2007, 11:53 AM »

armando, Dormouse, yksyks:

Maybe some misunderstanding, I do not want to specifically look for folders (which is the case if I revert to a different app like DOpus Find, Locate32 etc. just for a search containing folder names) or use some of the procedures described for X1 or Exalead.

I just want folders to be treated like files or file contents: One search over everything (isn't this what desktop search is all about?), and it will find the a folder with the keyword in its name just like a file with the string in its name or its content.

I read from your replies that almost all programs won't do that.
-alxwz (October 31, 2007, 03:48 PM)

I think you misunderstood what I said : X1 does not show folders per se in its results list, BUT will include folder names in its search so that if a file is IN a folder containing one of the keywords you're looking for, you'll see the file in the results list. That means that if a folder contains the keywords your looking for, but it's empty, you'll see nothing, not even the folder name. But if a folder contains 100 files, and its name contains one of your keywords, you'll see 100 files.

Armando · « **Reply #213 on:** November 08, 2007, 09:25 AM »

I got a reply from "likasoft", Archivarius' maker, concerning the 10000 files limit in the trial. They told me they would rethink their protection scheme. I think it's a good move

Darwin · « **Reply #214 on:** November 08, 2007, 11:07 AM »

Yeah, I should have posted this earlier, but I got a batch of responses from the developer a couple of days ago (he must have been on holidays or working on a big project or something) and he said much the same thing. He also indicated that he is working on the Outlook issue but can't give me an timeline for release (I'm guessing it's going to go into version 4 which should be out in the next year, based on his past release rate and the fact that the current version is 3.93).

MrCrispy · « **Reply #215 on:** November 08, 2007, 03:54 PM »

I tried Archivarius and didn't like it, because it doesn't have a preview pane. I don't want excerpts from my file with matching highlights, I want to see the entire file and then search for that term in it. This is how X1/Yahoo and Copernic do it and I'm afraid anything else (Archivarius, GDS) just doesn't make sense!

Ralf Maximus · « **Reply #216 on:** November 08, 2007, 07:41 PM »

I tried Archivarius and didn't like it, because it doesn't have a preview pane. I don't want excerpts from my file with matching highlights, I want to see the entire file and then search for that term in it. This is how X1/Yahoo and Copernic do it and I'm afraid anything else (Archivarius, GDS) just doesn't make sense!
-MrCrispy (November 08, 2007, 03:54 PM)

Yeah, I had the same exact reaction at first. I came from X1 and for all the things it did wrong, they sure got the preview functionality right. Archivarius seemed like a step backwards.

But after using Archivarius for a bit I now think of it as a super-advanced GUI grep, pointing me to files instead of handing them to me. If I want to see more than what's in the result pane I just double-click to launch the hosting app. Which I usually did anyway in X1 once I found something.

It's not perfect, but at least it indexes all my crap -- something X1 stopped doing a few revs back for some unfathomable reason.

Wait! I know what I'll do... reinstall X1 and have it process the Archivarius index files. GENIUS!

Ralf Maximus · « **Reply #217 on:** December 07, 2007, 11:43 AM »

I must make a small confession. I've been seeing another search engine. And I kind of like it.

Yes, feeling like a dirty hypocrite because I bag on Microsoft so much, I went and downloaded a copy of Windows Desktop Search. Surprisingly, it doesn't drag my system at all, even when indexing. The preview is dead-on, comparable to X1. Once I figured out how to make it index stuff out side "My Documents" I am now finding what I need pretty quickly.

It does not index my Thunderbird mail -- big shock.

But other than that, it's making me suspiciously satisfied. And unlike Archivarius, it seems to keep the indexes up to date at all times, which is good as I'm constantly updating and moving stuff around.

So.. am I a pervert now?

PhilB66 · « **Reply #218 on:** December 07, 2007, 12:08 PM »

So.. am I a pervert now?

-Ralf Maximus (December 07, 2007, 11:43 AM)

Absolutely.

Curt · « **Reply #219 on:** February 16, 2008, 08:10 AM »

IIRC "pervert" simply means abnormal, thus making you square! We are quite some millions using WDS...

-

I posted to tell that I've found another gratis Searcher, not mentioned before at DC: DK Finder
- just updated today, and here with almost every options displayed:

What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

What is the currently best Desktop Search software?

http://www.dkellner.hu/freeware/finder/

yksyks · « **Reply #220 on:** February 16, 2008, 02:31 PM »

Curt, could you give some more details about DK Finder? I failed in finding info like:

does it index PDF?
does it index mail?
does it use NEAR operator?
does it use reg-ex?

I'm afraid none of these... And I need them all. If I'm right I'm gonna stick at my current choice--Exalead one:desktop, despite my complaints. Or, when I get really fed up, back to Copernic.

Curt · « **Reply #221 on:** February 16, 2008, 07:02 PM »

@ yksyks, take an extra look at the last picture: YOU decide which files should be indexed, including PDF and e-mails. I have not yet tried DK Finder in its' details (I have and like my WDS 3.0), but it is very quick to test the program if you want to know the answers for sure - except that in my setup the program will finish launching surprisingly slow, after the GUI has become visible. I guess it is indexing at the same time.

I have no idea what NEAR operators are, but it accepts arguments, if that is what 'reg-ex' is.

--

So you past a hundred posts without any notice? Hmm...

Keep them coming, yksyks!

yksyks · « **Reply #222 on:** February 17, 2008, 01:00 AM »

Thank you, Curt. I'll give it a try, provided I find some spare time, which is unlikely, though. Yes, I overlooked the E-mails item, but for the others I'm skeptic. It's a pity there is no feature list on the site.

NEAR operator finds two words close to each other, separated by usually 8 or 10 other words, and in any order. Inevitable, if you need to find for example an expression like "Harvey Lewis". In the documents he may be listed as "Lewis, Harvey", or even "Harvey Spencer Lewis". Using OR operator doesn't help, there may be dozens of other Harveys and Lewises, and exact phrase wouldn't help here, but the NEAR operator will do.

Reg-ex means regular expression.

Copernic's latest versions utilize NEAR operator, Exalead uses both NEAR and reg-ex.

Regarding my 100th post I introduced myself on that occasion and that's enough.

yksyks · « **Reply #223 on:** February 17, 2008, 02:43 AM »

Oh, this was a misunderstanding. I understood it in the sense of the thread name, so I expected the DK Finder is a desktop search program, that is, it indexes and searches the contents of files. It doesn't apparently. It belongs more to locate32 or ScanFS rank. My first impression is that the "Content filter" searches the files in real-time, not from index, which is obviously very slow. This works good if you want to limit your search and you know at least part of a filename, but searching the whole disk to find an unknown file with a required expression could take hours.

Having realized this it seems to be good, I'll give it some time. In a given context the NEAR operator doesn't apply here, but the reg-ex would be still good.

Maybe this would be answer to alxwz's request.

Curt · « **Reply #224 on:** February 17, 2008, 04:38 AM »

My bad; I should have quoted the very first sentence from the homepage:

Finder is an index-based fast file search tool
-Finder's homepage

- no content. Sorry.

What I like about DK Finder is that it will index and search as I tell it to for what-ever filetype placed where-ever. And this situaytion is where I would want a search engine in the first place. I never search for documents, because they are where they should be, aren't they; I placed them myself. I only search my PC when some program is naming this or that file. And for these situations WDS, Copernic, and most of the others are almost useless. Or maybe I just never figured out how to use them, but that too is due cause for disqualification.

Poll

Which Desktop Search Tool(s) do you use? (Choose up to 2)

Author Topic: What is the currently best Desktop Search software? (Read 809648 times)