This post is in response to Neal’s comments on my last post about Copernic Desktop Search. He asked for a bit more detail:

I’d be interested to know what is new in the beta? In particular, does it yet give you a “list as you type” list of results from the task bar search box, like GDS? That’s one thing that I do miss.

Neal, this one’s for you!

First, I haven’t noticed any big functionality changes in the beta - I’m sure they’re there, and all you need to do is read Copernic’s beta page to see what the official party line is. For me, I like the fact that I didn’t notice anything big - that means that (1) I wasn’t missing any functionality in the first place and (2) The beta didn’t break anything. It’s like getting a good haircut - people don’t notice when you get a good haircut ;)

Anyway, what I did notice was that the interface had changed slightly - it’s more colourful and gooey, as you can see below. Things I like about the interface:

• I can choose to look only at files (this is my default - I never search for anything else).
• In files, I can choose file type, file location, size, date, etc.
• I can sort my results by date, so that that newest files are on top, older files below, grouped by categories, like Yesterday, Last Week, Last Month, etc. etc.
• I can still open a file’s folder, as opposed to opening the file first. Now, this button has moved to on top of the preview pane - it used to be on top of the file listing, and at first I was scared that it was gone for good, but I found it.
• Preview is awesome, as always. It might be even more awesome now.

And, in response to Neal’s specific question about “list as you type”. YES! Here’s an example of my typing “copernic” into the search bar. As soon as I typed “c”, stuff started popping up, but I’m showing you what happens after I type “coper”. Notice that it even asks if I’ve spelled a word wrong! And, you can select what kind of file you’re looking for, etc. And, even better for me, if you right-click on a file in this list, there is a context menu option for “Open Folder”. Love it.

There’s a post over on the David Allen Co GTD Forum asking for advice about desktop search programs. Smithdoug has some specific requirements that he wants his search program to satisfy. I read the list, decided that Copernic Desktop Search definitely fit the bill, and posted a response. Here it is, in all its glory:

I think I’m looking for something that:• Is Fast. I presume this means indexing the drive(s). But it should not degrade overall system performance. (I assume this means that it’s smart enough to do its indexing only while the system is idle.)
• Can find and retrieve any pertinent piece of information, including documents whose existence I’ve forgotten. This would include e-mail messages both within Outlook but also those archived in an out-of-Outlook folder by MessageSave. Also pdf documents, in addition to all of the other standard formats. And how about Outlook Journal records too?
• Can search local drives and also files or directories on a server. But not the Internet. (I think there are utilities that search both desktop and Internet, are there not?). The Google-type Internet search engines work fine, but I prefer to keep desktop searches separate.
• Being able to preview retrieved files without opening applications—a la Enfish—would be great. And the ability to do Boolean searches would be useful.

I heartily recommend Copernic. I’ve been using their desktop search for about a year now and have just switched over to the Beta of their version 2.

It is fast - I don’t time the indexing, but after the initial indexing of your hard drive, you won’t even notice it. It indexes only when your machine isn’t busy, and you can adjust those settings as well, e.g., mine will index if my machine is not busy for 2 minutes. In addition, you can have it set so that it indexes on the fly, i.e., as soon as a document changes. I’ve got this option set, and haven’t noticed any performance problems. (Well, actually, when I first got the beta for version 2, this setting caused a bit of a problem when I came back to my machine after a while, but it was a beta after all. I contacted Copernic and within a week, they had sent me a patch which had fixed the problem - excellent customer support in my mind.) It’s also fast while searching - amazingly so. I use the copernic toolbar and often before I finish typing, the search results are coming up. (As an aside, the toolbar is good for quick and dirty searches, but I prefer opening the main program so that I can see the location of my files, and the preview.)

CDS finds everything that I need: standard office documents, pdfs, email in outlook (don’t know about saved mail or journal entries, since I don’t use those), contacts, favourites (and you can tell it to use Firefox), music, pictures, etc. etc. etc. You can set what kind of files you want it to look at (love this feature over Google and MSN when I was trying them out), and you can add new file extensions. This last is good for when you deal with say, .bat or .pl files. Since they’re text, you can see the contents in a preview. For other strange extensions, you can just see the titles, but that’s okay too.

You can tell it what directories to search, or not search. I have no need to search my program files, so they’re turned off, as are a couple of miscellaneous directories. You can even tell it what kind of thing to look for in a directory, e.g., just music or just files or everything. I just did a quick check, and when you add in a new folder/directory, you can browse to your network computers, so I think you should be able to look at networked drives no problem. And as far as I remember, it doesn’t search online. I thought the older version did have that option, but I don’t see it in my settings.

The preview is awesome. You can see Word, Excel, PPT, text, HTML, etc. You can even see pdf content. (Sometimes the pdf isn’t really pretty, but it’s good enough to see the context of what you’re searching for).

Also, when searching, you can designate what kind of thing you want to search for, e.g., all, images, music, files, email, etc. You can also specify a file type, e.g., txt, doc, etc. You can specify even a location to look, if want to narrow things down a bit, and specify size and date. These last few I never even have to use because the basic search works so well for me. I have the results sorted by date (and grouped), so things that I access often are near the top of the list - this structure works well for me, since I can usually remember if I’ve worked on something yesterday, last week, last month, last year, etc.

Anyway, I hope this review helps you. I’ve played with a few other desktop search programs but as far as I’m concerned, CDS takes the cake.

I like to use MindJet’s MindManager to create mind maps. I don’t do it very often, usually just when brainstorming, or say, creating the outline for a thesis I’m not going to write for another two years ;)

I also absolutely love using Copernic Desktop Search. You may recall an earlier post I did about CDS. This desktop searcher keeps getting kudos and high reviews for how well it works. However, up to now, the best you could do with some files, like mind maps, was to have CDS index the name of the file, but not the content.

No longer! MindJet has released a wonderful little add-in that lets CDS index the contents of a mindmap as if it were a text file. I found out about this from a post on the Office Weblog. At that time (like a day ago), there was basically just the .msi to download and not much information. I downloaded and installed it, but wasn’t sure if it was working. I got into an email correspondence with a wonderful gentleman over at MindJet and now everything works beautifully. The key is that you have to tell CDS that files with the .mmap extension can be indexed as text files (really easy). MindJet has also improved the instructions on their download page. The only downfall is that you don’t get to see the mindmap structure in the preview pane, but hey, at least you can find the information.

One of my favourite tools these days is Copernic’s Desktop Search (CDS). A few months ago I had played with CDS and the Google and MSN versions. At that time, CDS won with me. Out of curiosity, I did a bit of searching today to see how CDS stacks up with others in the know. Turns out that it’s still doing fine.

Advantages of CDS:

• add any type of file you like - if CDS can’t search the contents of the file, at least you can search for the file name
• ability to search for partial file names - you don’t need to know the whole name
• ability to search Firefox’s history! only one to do this so far, and works a heck of alot better than Firefox’s history search
• standalone program, indexing in the background, can run from a toolbar
• preview of many file types, including images, Microsoft Office documents, and most importantly to me, pdf

What I miss:

• ability to search some of my note-keeping software, such as EverNote or Microsoft OneNote

Here are some links that lead to reviews of the desktop search market, with an emphasis on CDS:

• Keeper Finders - Five new programs that let you search your hard drive without having a seizure. By Paul Boutin
• Find it Fast: Eight apps that search your hard drive (CNet Reviews)
• SearchEngineWatch Blog: post about University study of desktop search programs