Archivarius questions (help using)

[Yatom]

As it has been pointed out on this forum previously, those who run Archivarius don't necessarily respond quickly.  Can someone familiar with the program answer these questions (or any of them) please.

1) Can the "hit highlighting" color for the primary search results be made different from the color of Ctrl+F (Find on Page) results?  In other words, I search for the word "Netherlands" and all the results are highlighted in a color of my choosing.  But currently, if I then use the Ctrl+F locator to search for other words, they get highlighted in that same color, making for some ambiguity.  Is there a way to make the colors different?

2) Can I specify a proximity search other than 10 words apart?  So far, I only see an option to search for words that are 10 words apart from each other.  But what if I want 25, 50, or 100 words apart for my search terms?  Can this be done?

3) I can't seem to do a simple "Exact" search.  I've search with quotation marks for "Nazarenes" and I end up getting results for "Nazarene" (in the singular).  Please tell me that this amazing program can do the most simple of things in the world: an Exact search.

4) Is there a way to run a search on only one kind of file type?  I have sticky notes in many of my pdf's, and I'm not sure, but I wonder if these are a specific file type.  How could I run a search that finds hits *only* in my Sticky Notes (i.e. comments) within pdf files?

Again, I've written their Support, but haven't gotten any response.  I would greatly appreciate if someone on this forum can advise regarding these questions.

Yatom

[superboyac]

1, no
2, not sure, these are way fancier features than i use
3, not sure, i thought no quotations are exact and if you want not exact you use asterisks like *nazarene*
4, not sure, cant you specify the extension in the actual search term?

[Yatom]

Thanks so much for this reply.

Quotation marks around a *phrase* are supposed to be exact, but not around a word.  Try it yourself if you are not sure.  Also, under the FAQ on Archivarius' webpage (http://www.likasoft.com/faq.shtml) it says the following:

"Question: Why morphology?
Answer: Morphological search function allows Archivarius 3000 to search documents using all grammar forms of the query word. For instance, if you enter the German word "gleich", Archivarius 3000 would also search for such its forms: "gleichen", "gleicher", "gleiche", etc. Ordinary search systems, which have no support of morphology, would search only for the form you enter. Archivarius 3000 fully supports morphology of English, German, French, Spanish, and other languages, making a total of 18."

I don't know why this question is listed under FAQ, but it *seems* to be suggesting that there is no exact search, as though the developer has been asked this question many times, and he felt the need to respond.  Though the above quotation doesn't state outright that there isn't an exact search, my hunch is that this is what he is addressing.

If anyone else can answer regarding my original questions above, I would really appreciate it.  Thank you to superboyac for your response.

[Yatom]

Please someone:

I need your help.  I'm going dizzy over trying different desktop search engines.  Archivarius indexes well and searches fast, but literally (I-kid-you-not) cannot do an *exact* search for a word.  It tries to "think" for you and turns up morphological variants of what *you* (the user) typed in the search field.  Unbelievable!!!  You would think a program this powerful (index thousands upon thousands of files of all kinds in the universe) would actually let you search for an EXACT WORD.  No.  And the developer won't answer any email after a whole month!  Also, I need a greater proximity search range than merely 10 words.  That's a nice option, but I need 25 words apart, 50 words apart, or whatever I stinkin' like.

Just downloaded DtSearch.  Indexed fast.  Searches fast.  But takes FOREVER to open the same files Archivarius opens in no time.  I have an often cited .pdf file, which I'm constantly searching in with Archivarius.  It's big (750MB).  Archivarius opens it--the whole document in plain text--in 3 seconds flat.  Dtsearch takes 60 seconds--a whole minute.  Then when it finally does open in DtSearch, I can't use the Find on Page (Ctrl+F) utility, because it freezes up.  The program literally chokes on large files.

ARE THERE ANY OTHER DESKTOP SEARCH ENGINES OUT THERE THAT CAN DO 1) EXACT SEARCH (I.E. NOT "THINK" FOR YOU); 2) PROXIMITY SEARCHES 25 WORDS APART OR GREATER; 3) DON'T CHOKE ON LARGE FILES?

THANK YOU FOR RESPONDING, IF YOU KNOW

[YannickDa]

Well, yes you can search for an exact match. At the top left corner of the main program's window, click on "Enter Request" (blue & underlined), this will pop up a dialog box. Then in the third combobox (labeled "exact phrase"), type in the string you are looking for.
Et voilà...

[IainB]

@YannickDa: That's a nifty and intuitive tip - worth remembering! 

[Yatom]

@YannickDa: Thank you for such a speedy answer, HOWEVER it is incorrect.  Even though it says "EXACT MATCH" it really isn't.  Just try it yourself.  In fact, all it does is add "" marks around the word or phrase, which you can do manually yourself in the regular search field.  But it will *not* find the exact search, even though it claims it will.

Case in point: I just searched "Nazarenes" (plural) using your suggestion, and it returned hits with just "Nazarene"  This is problematic because adding the "s" on the end gives the word a whole different connotation.  So basically, with an index of 10,000 files, I'm getting hundreds or thousands of false hits, just because the program can't tell the difference between "Nazarenes" and "Nazarene."

Correct me please, if you find another way; but friends, I've tried for a *month* to manipulate or figure out a workaround to actually do an *exact* search, and the program simply won't do it.  Yes, it *claims* to do "Exact" search, but bottom line, it does not.

[Dormouse]

I haven't used Archivarius for a long time - I've just checked and I don't even have it installed at the moment - so I'm not in the best position to answer your questions.

My only comment is on your Nazarene Vs Nazarenes question. I don't know whether you have tried a search with a space at the end of Nazarene. Some programs will ignore spaces, but I've found surprisingly often that I have to use spaces to make a program do what I want; before and after, depending on the word.

wrt Likasoft generally, I've noticed that updates have been coming infrequently (last update 2018) and I wonder if its writer's attention may mostly be elsewhere.

[Yatom]

I appreciate the suggestion on "Nazarenes" vs. "Nazarene" but it doesn't work.  I've tried everything.

"Nazarenes"
"Nazarenes "
"Nazarenes_"
"Nazarenes?"
"Nazarenes*"

I've even tried the so-called "space sensitive" search, which takes a relatively long time to run.  It returns files in the results menu, but doesn't highlight or total any actual hits. That's obviously useless.

So absolutely nothing works to get a *true literal / exact search*.  That is totally asinine, if you ask me.  Who would build a program to search files (especially one as powerful as this), and yet not allow it to perform a literal, or exact search--not even on a *single word*?

Again, I've just downloaded dtSearch, and it indexes fast, and searches relatively fast (slower than Archivarius), but it takes FOREVER to display the results in any file.  I have a 750MB pdf file that is a huge repository of OCR'd information that I regularly search.  Archivarius opens it in 3 seconds.  DtSearch takes 60 seconds, and then freezes.  So that's obviously a no-go.

Can any other search program come close to the power of Archivarius, but also offer a (true) exact search, and greater vicinity/proximity search than a mere 10-word limit?  All your wisdom and experience will be appreciated.

[Dormouse]

Any possibility of a Nazarene -Nazarenes working?

[Yatom]

Great news!!!  Archivarius *can* do a true exact search after all, despite the fact that...

1) The Archivarius website under FAQ gives an explanation for why the developer chose "morphology search" for the program, giving the impression (as I posted previously) that a (true) exact search isn't an option.

2) Nothing is said anywhere on the website, nor in the Help section of the program itself, which explains that a true exact search can be done.  Not one word anywhere to the effect of what I'm about to share.

3) The internet, including sites like this, says absolutely nothing (I've searched a dozen times).  Oddly enough to me, no one else cared about this, apparently.

4) The developer never responded to my multiple emails from multiple addresses over the course of a month (sent to Support, Sales, Contact, etc.)

So, here's the good news, finally.  The "problem" was in a deep setting located in the program (again, without any explanation).  If you open Archivarius, select an index, and then select "Settings," there is an option titled "Morphology."  The program is defaulted to create an index in "morphology" mode, which dictates in turn how the search will function.  Hence, if you don't want the program "thinking" for you, and adding "s" "es" "ing" and all other data to your search, you must build the index without this morphological setting.

Thankfully, I remembered the mention of "morphology" from the FAQ on the website (again, though it gives the impression that *there isn't any other option*, and I decided to give this thing a whirl.  And thank God (truly), it worked.

So thanks all of you for your helpful suggestions.  If you are also suffering from the lack of a true exact search, simply change this setting, and then rebuild your index.

(Note, however, that the program will try to "trick" you yet again, because--oddly enough--when you go to rebuild the index *after* turning the setting off, the program still flips the setting back on once more(!).  You have to keep your eye out as you are about to build the index, and turn the setting off a second time.  Unbelievable.)

Also, after hours of testing and experimenting, another tip for any of you who, like me, are chaffed by the fact that the proximity / vicinity search is limited to only 10 words apart: you can try inserting "filler" terms between the two primary terms you are searching for, and if any of those "filler" terms exist, then it will allow you to extend the range beyond just 10 words apart.

For instance, if I search [president...issued] it will find the these words as long as they are within 10 words from each other.  But that isn't a great enough range sometimes.  So if you search [president...and...issued] or [president...if...issued], and if the middle term indeed exists between the other two terms, then the range is counted between all three terms, and it can potentially increase the range of the two primary terms to 18 words apart instead of only 10.

Note: this is hit and miss, and the worst apart about Archivarius (now that I figured the exact search thing) is that wildcards (*/?) can't be used in a proximity/vicinity search.  (What!?!)  Moreover, you can't nest an OR search within a proximity search either.  If you could, then you would be smart to do something like [president...(did, and, if, so, to, that, but, a, the)...issued], and it would increase your chances of extending the search range beyond just 10 words apart.

Thankfully, despite the grievances above, the program *does* let you use OR terms *outside* of the proximity/vicinity search, so you are able to try something like this: [president...issued] OR [president...did...issue] OR [president...will...issue] OR [president...and...issued]

Finally, to any who, like me, may come to read this because they are searching for the best Desktop search program available (thanks to all of you who have discussed these things before, as they led me to Archivarius in the first place), I will give my experience as a Windows 7 user.

x1: Tried it 2 nights ago for the first time, out of exasperation because of the no-exact-search issue with Archivarius.  X1 wouldn't install, and when it finally did, the program opened and immediately told me that my computer's system clock was wrong, and that I needed to go to some website to update my computer's clock.  There was no way around this message, and as soon as I said "OK," the program closed.  So I threw it in the trash.  I've never in my life had a program that--upon first opening it--utterly refused to work because my *system clock was wrong*.  So, to the trash you go.

Dtsearch: Installed easy.  Index built fast.  Searches run fast.  BUT, files take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to open.  I have a 1GB pdf with heavy OCR done in it, and it is one of my primary search results for everything I do.  Archivarius opens it in 3 seconds flat (meaning, plain text viewer).  Dtsearch took 60 seconds to open it.  And this difference was similar across several documents I tested with.  Moreover, once Dtsearch finally opened the files in the viewer, the "Find on Page" (Ctrl+F) locator froze.  It literally took about a minute to type the word "the" into the Find on Page utility.  So, no go.  Also, I use Hebrew a lot.  Dtsearch mangles it always, and they even admit to this on their website.

Archivarius: Now that I know it can actually do a true exact search, I'm on Cloud-9 with this thing.  Yes, it has bugs, and bugs for which the developer / support / sales apparently no longer exist, because I've been trying to get in touch with them for a whole month.  Not one peep back.  But for $36, the program absolutely rocks.  Having tasted some of the other programs, I'm thoroughly impressed by Archivarius.  It has revolutionized by process of searching.  I have an index of about 8,000 files--almost 1GB--and Archivarius handles it great.

[IainB]

Great news!!!  Archivarius *can* do a true exact search after all, despite the fact that...

Thank goodness for that.

[Dormouse]

Great news!!! 

Thanks for the persistence, description and precision.

Helps me remember why I chose Archivarius in the first place, but also reminds me why I drifted out of using it. A very fine program for the time, but, as it wasn't at the core of what I was doing, the time consumed always felt disproportionate. And, in the absence of self-contained expertise, the complexity required active support and preferably an equally active forum of users. I think most of my tasks just hit a "there must be a better way" moment and got broken down differently into smaller chunks. I now use the much simpler docfetcher; good enough for what I use it for now and apparently actively maintained. And less indexing, which I think is the core of my issue.

[tomos]

So, here's the good news, finally.  The "problem" was in a deep setting located in the program ... If you open Archivarius, select an index, and then select "Settings," there is an option titled "Morphology."  The program is defaulted to create an index in "morphology" mode, which dictates in turn how the search will function.  ... you must build the index without this morphological setting.
... I decided to give this thing a whirl.  And thank God (truly), it worked.
... so simply change this setting, and then rebuild your index.

I'm curious:
once you've indexed thus, is Archivarius able to do a 'fuzzy' search of same text?

[Yatom]

I think most of my tasks just hit a "there must be a better way" moment

Yes, I've had *many* frustrating moments with Archivarius, but in the absence of help, I've made extensive "notes" as I learn what it can and (ugh!) can't do, so I've essentially built my own Help Documentation for the program.  The good side is that, because my notes are in .jpg images, the program can index and display those, so it's like I've built the Help Documentation into the program.  And again, I'm still bummed by some of the "peculiarities" of the program, but now that I know--f-i-n-a-l-l-y--that it can do a true literal search (except for case sensitive though; I haven't figure out how to get that to work), I'm tremendously relieved.

once you've indexed thus, is Archivarius able to do a 'fuzzy' search of same text?

Let me answer this way (and I should've mentioned before that I'm using Archivarius 4.79/x32 (32-bit version): it may depend on what you mean by "fuzzy."  But consider the following test to begin with, now that I have turned off "morphology" and rebuilt the index without it.  Searching from the primary search field, without any other settings taken into consideration...

Nazarene  - only finds "Nazarene" in the singular (263 hits in my doc)
"Nazarene"  - same exact thing as above
Nazarene?    - finds "Nazarenes" but no longer finds just "Nazarene" (300 hits in my doc)
"Nazarene?"  - same exact things as #1 and #2
Nazarene*  - finds "Nazarene" or "Nazarenes" (575 hits in my doc)
"Nazarene*"  - doesn't work, or find anything in my doc (false hits appear in other files?)
(*Nazarene*)  - 580 hits in my doc (This search is the same as "Enter query" -> "with PART of the words")

So, depending on what you mean by "fuzzy searching" hopefully this helps.  If you mean "fuzzy" in terms of complex algorithms, I'd say no.  Besides the primary search field, just ran my eyes through all the settings, options, and various search fields in the program.  The word "fuzzy" doesn't appear anywhere.  So in conclusion, the program no longer seems to be "thinking" for me at all, but it does allow the use of wildcards (at least, to some extent, though not in proximity/vicinity search, nor in *exact phrase* searching, where you put "" marks around a phrase).

Let me know if this doesn't answer the question.

[tomos]

^ thanks 

[David.P]

Wow, just found this very special thread about a very special software.

I actually somehow suspected that, if at all, this would have to be found on Donationcoder

Anyway, I also had difficulties with searching for exact matches of words. Likasoft support (when they were still responding some years ago) told me that in order for this to work, I would have to create my index with "morphology processing" disabled.

I hope that helps.


Something else I never really have figured out is searching for files only under a certain path (say, like D:\Documents\Project_ABC).

I'd be very thankful for ideas on how to do this, should it be possible.


Apart from that, I also haven't found any desktop search solution that comes remotely close to Archivarius 3000 regarding speed and ease of use. It even runs portable on my company laptop and indexes the entire network server like it's nothing. And I'm talking file numbers in the 7-figure range here.

However, should Likasoft be dead, sooner or later we'd all have to look for a replacement

Thanks for any comments guys

[Yatom]

I would have to create my index with "morphology processing" disabled.  I hope that helps.

Yes, I labored for nearly two months with the software (with 0-zilch support), wasting countless hours, before eventually finding that out myself.  Ugh.  But at least glad that I eventually found it, so thank you for your help.

Something else I never really have figured out is searching for files only under a certain path (say, like D:\Documents\Project_ABC).I'd be very thankful for ideas on how to do this, should it be possible.

The instructions under "Help" in the program state the following:

dir:"c:\folder\‫"״‬

Searching in specified path. This path may contain mask characters like and ? . For example, dir: c:\* will search all files on disk C: in all sub-folders. But dir:"c:\" will search files in root of C. without sub-folders. It is possible to specify several parameters in single query: dir:"c:\‫ "״‬dir:"d:\folder\*".  Searching by file name without full path. This name may contain mask characters like "‫ "״‬and "?". It is possible to filename:"‫״‬report‫ "״‬specify several parameters in single query.

But for what it's worth, I have always received false hits when trying to narrow a search by filename or by directory.  Given that the developer hasn't responded to any of my inquiries, I've had to stumble my way through, figuring out things as I go.  I therefore built myself my own "help" file for this program, containing numerous screenshots as reminders on limitations, bugs, and best use.

I have a helpful demonstration (screenshot) of how to do directory searches, while also eliminating false hits.  See this attachment, and hopefully this helps.

[David.P]

Thank you very much Yatom!

That looks very promising and I will make sure to try your detailed How-To the next time I need to search in certain directories.

I'm glad to have found this place where one can exchange experiences and questions about Archivarius 3000.

Best regards
David

--
Edit: I just tried to search with this string

Code

music dir:"d:\My-Folder\*"

However, it doesnt find any files in or below the 'My-Folder' path this way. Instead, it finds all files anywhere that contain "music" in the file name.

How weird is that?

--
Edit 2: OK I now found that everything under "Search Attributes" (which I never understood anway) must be cleared in order for the directory search to work:



In this case it doesn't even give any "false positives" from other directories.

[Yatom]

Good, looks like you are figuring it out.

[David.P]

Hi all,

sadly, Likasoft seems to be dead. I also mailed sales a few weeks ago and got no answer, similar to tech support who stopped answering years ago.

What I've been trying to figure out for a long time with no success is how to search for exact phrase matches containing hyphens like for example "20-30".

Also, when searching for any exact phrase matches, it never seems to be possible to easily locate them in the preview pane, because Archivarius wouldn't create find buttons for the phrase you looked for. Instead. it creates buttons for each single search term inside the search phrase, see screenshot:



It can be seen that although searching for "20-30" as a phrase, Archivarius found the phrase "20, 30".

Additionally, it didn't create a find button for "20-30" in the preview pane's toolbar, but instead two separate buttons for "20" and "30". These are not of much use because the separate search terms "20" and "30" occur many times throughout the document, which makes it very difficult to actually locate the occurrences of the search phrase "20-30" in the preview pane.

Thanks for any hints or ideas how to improve exact phrase search!

Cheers
David

[wraith808]

You can check for sure to see if they're still solvent by calling their sales number: +1 (800) 903-4152.  The sales links still work, so some plumbing is still there.

[Yatom]

@David P.

What I've been trying to figure out for a long time with no success is how to search for exact phrase matches containing hyphens like for example "20-30".

Sadly, from my months of experience racking my brain with this program, it doesn't seem to be able to do this *directly.*  However, for an indirect workaround see attached.