Content Indexing

Discussion related to "Everything" 1.5.
void
Developer
Posts: 20362
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Content Indexing

Post by void »

Everything 1.5 adds support for content indexing.

Enabling content indexing will make finding text inside files instant:


System index
Setup content indexing
Search content
Advanced



System Index

Before enabling content indexing in Everything, consider using your Windows index.

To search your Windows index from Everything, use the system-index: or si: search function.
For example:
si:"my content search"



Setup content indexing

Enabling content indexing:

Everything will keep content in memory.
Content indexing is intended for indexing user documents only.
Indexing over 1GB of text is not recommended.
For the best performance, set an include only folder.
To enable content indexing:
  • In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
  • Click the Advanced tab on the left.
  • To the right of Show settings containing, search for:
    content
  • Select: content_indexing_enabled
  • Set the value to: true
  • Click OK.
Content is indexed in the background.

Progress is shown in the status bar:


Right click the progress bar to pause or resume content indexing.

To set an include only folder:
  • In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
  • Click the Advanced tab on the left.
  • To the right of Show settings containing, search for:
    content
  • Select: content_indexing_include_only_folders
  • Click Edit....
  • Add the folders to include and click OK.
    For example:
    c:\users\<my user name>\Documents
  • Click OK.
By default, Everything will index the following file types for content:
*.doc;*.docx;*.pdf;*.txt;*.xls;*.xlsx


To set the file types to index for content:
  • In Everything, from the Tools menu, click Options.
  • Click the Advanced tab on the left.
  • To the right of Show settings containing, search for:
    content
  • Select: content_indexing_include_only_files
  • Click Edit....
  • Add file filters and click OK.
    For example:
    *.pdf
  • Click OK.
To view the content index size:
  • In Everything, from the Tools menu, under the Debug submenu, click Statistics.
  • The total content size is shown as Content data size.


Searching content

To search for indexed content, use the content: search function
For example, to find files containing the phrase: to be or not to be, search for:
content:"to be or not to be"

When index content is enabled, content: will only search files included by your index content settings.
To search for text in files that are not included by your index content settings, use the notindexed: search modifier.

For example, to search for phrase 'to be or not to be' in pdf files in a downloads folder:
ext:pdf \downloads notindexed:content:"to be or not to be"



Use < and > with your content: search to allow search operators.
For example to search content for the text: abc AND 123, search for:
content:<abc 123>

For example to search content for the text: abc OR 123, search for:
content:<abc | 123>



Advanced

Everything will treat the following file types as plain text files:

a;ans;asc;ascx;asm;asp;aspx;asx;bas;bat;bcp;btm;c;cc;cls;cmd;contact;cpp;cs;csa;csproj;css;csv;cxx;dbs;def;dic;dos;dsp;dsw;efu;ext;faq;fky;h;hhc;hpp;hta;htm;html;htt;htw;htx;hxx;i;ibq;ics;idl;idq;inc;inf;ini;inl;inx;jav;java;js;json;kci;lgn;lst;lua;m3u;mak;mk;odc;odh;odl;php;pl;prc;ps1xml;py;rc;rc2;rct;reg;rgs;rul;s;scc;shtm;shtml;sol;sql;srf;stm;tab;tdl;tlh;tli;trg;txt;udf;udt;user;usr;vbproj;vbs;vcproj;viw;vspscc;vsscc;vssscc;wri;wtx;xml;xsd;xsl;xslt

For other file types, Everything will read the content with the extension-associated iFilter.
If there is no extension-associated iFilter, the file content is treated as text/plain.

You can install third party iFilters to read content for other file types.
Windows 10 comes with iFilters built-in to read common files types such as docx and pdf.

To customize the list of files to treat as plain text:
  • In Everything, from the Tools menu, under the Debug submenu, click Config.
    This will open your config file in Notepad.
  • Change the following semicolon delimited (;) line:
    text_plain_extensions=a;ans;asc;ascx;asm;asp;aspx;asx;bas;bat;bcp;btm;c;cc;cls;cmd;contact;cpp;cs;csa;csproj;css;csv;cxx;dbs;def;dic;dos;dsp;dsw;efu;ext;faq;fky;h;hhc;hpp;hta;htm;html;htt;htw;htx;hxx;i;ibq;ics;idl;idq;inc;inf;ini;inl;inx;jav;java;js;json;kci;lgn;lst;lua;m3u;mak;mk;odc;odh;odl;php;pl;prc;ps1xml;py;rc;rc2;rct;reg;rgs;rul;s;scc;shtm;shtml;sol;sql;srf;stm;tab;tdl;tlh;tli;trg;txt;udf;udt;user;usr;vbproj;vbs;vcproj;viw;vspscc;vsscc;vssscc;wri;wtx;xml;xsd;xsl;xslt
  • Save changes and exit Notepad.
  • In Everything, accept the prompt to reload your config.



text/plain file types.
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