FARR can't find .exe file - Newbie question

[cyberdiva]

Mouser, after reading your recent comment about FARR being useful even if one already uses LBC, I decided to give FARR a try.  I asked it to find Quick View Plus, which I have in an old version (version 6).  I typed Quick View, and FARR came up with two possibilities: Quick View Plus and the uninstall link.  I clicked on Quick View Plus, but instead of opening the program, it simply took me to the directory C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Quick View Plus.  That directory has only two items--the uninstaller and a shortcut called, oddly, View a File...lnk.  Clicking on that opens Quick View Plus.  That seemed very strange to me, especially since there's an entire Quick View Plus directory under Program Files, and it includes a 40 KB file called qvp32.exe (in Program Files\Quick View Plus\Program), which is apparently the file that launches the program.

I then tried typing qvp in FARR, but that just brought up two identical entries leading to the Documents and Settings directory I mentioned above, plus the uninstall program.  And typing qvp32 in FARR yielded NO results.  I have no idea why FARR isn't going to the right place and giving me a result that will directly open Quick View Plus.

I decided that perhaps I needed to create an alias for this program.  I went to the Help file and found this statement: "These .alias files are located in the AliasGroups\ subdirectory of FARR, and are further broken up into AliasGroups\Installed and AliasGroups\MyCustom."  When I went into Options and selected AliasGroups, I found nothing that corresponded to Installed or MyCustom.

I'd welcome some help with this.  Many thanks in advance.

[mouser]

good questions all.

first lets start with the fact that it sounds like you have an odd situation with quick view plus.. im not sure the details but it sounds like maybe the shortcut is named oddly.  if there is a shortcut to qvp32.exe in your start menu, with a nice name, FARR should be able to find it and let you launch it.

so one of the easiest things you could do to get what you want is CREATE a normal windows shortcut to qvp32.exe and place that in your start menu.  Then if you can launch it manually from your start menu, farr should be able to find it and launch it as well.  this has the advantage that you can name the shortcut anything you want and place it anywhere IN YOUR START MENU that you want.

now.. you also came to a good conclusion that an alias could also be used to solve this problem -- and offers additional benefits sometimes.

the help you found wasn't very helpful.  part of the problem is that aliases changed in v2 and the help file may lag a bit.  while it tells you the truth about where alias files are located and named -- as an end user this isnt very helpful to you.

as an end user, what you would do is go to options, then select the Aliases/Groups tab, then choose "myaliases.alias" file from the drop down on the right:



this tells far you want to edit your custom alias file -- the others items in the drop down are predefined alias groups you can view, disable, but not edit.

now right click in the list of your aliases, and choose to add a new alias.

then you might configure your new alias with a name of
qvp or quickviewplus (no spaces are allowed)
and put the path to the file in the results list.

everything else can be left alone.

that should be it.

[mouser]

note:
i am going to be posting some video tutorials of using FARR soon, so stay tuned for that.

[cyberdiva]

Mouser, thanks so much for your prompt and detailed response.  You're right that the shortcut that was in the Start Menu was oddly named--it was View a File...lnk.  And it wasn't with the .exe file in Program Files but rather in the directory I mentioned in Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Quick View Plus.  Anyway, I took your advice (I think) and added the qvp32.exe file to the Start Menu.  If I go to the Start Menu and click on qvp32.exe, it opens Quick View Plus.  And FARR can now find it.  However, when I type in qvp in FARR, I get the following:



I can't tell from the preview whether this is visible.  I hope it is, and I hope it shows duplicate listings that I don't understand and don't know how to get rid of.

Also, I'm not sure I need an alias now, but your instructions didn't correspond to what I see when I go into Options and choose Aliases/Groups.  I don't see a myaliases.alias file.  Here's what I see:



Since I can now get FARR to bring up the file I want by typing qvp, I don't think I will need an alias for this, but I'd like to understand the aliases feature better, since I'm likely to want to use it eventually.

Again, MANY MANY THANKS!

[mouser]

you need to scroll down that list until you get to myaliases.alias -- it should be there, near the bottom.  there has to be a reason for the duplicates.  click on each item and look in status bar for a clue to where they are.

normally farr will remove duplicates so something may be different about them..

[cyberdiva]

Mouser, there was no way to scroll past the last of the two tiddlywiki entries.

And I've just looked pretty closely at the properties for the two sets of duplicates.  I can see absolutely no difference between the two.  The status bar gives the same location for each twin as well.

[mouser]

well if that's true about aliases then farr is failing to give you a very important alias file..  what operating system?

as for the duplicates:
go to options under the Search Behavior tab, and make sure to check the two boxes that control removing duplicates:

[cyberdiva]

Thanks very much, mouser.  Your instructions about duplicates took care of that problem.  The "remove duplicate links to same target application" hadn't been checked.  Once I checked it, the duplicates were gone.

As for the other issue, I'm using Windows XP Pro with SP2.

[mouser]

i've uploaded a new minor update version of FARR, to fix the bug that cyberdiva found where the myalias.alias file was not being automatically created.. i don't know why it wasn't affecting my pc but was affecting hers, but i'll bet it was affecting others as well.. should be fixed with new version.