Windows Search 4 - Wildcard in file content

[Ken-T]

Hi,

firstly, apologies if this post lands in the wrong groups.

Have Windows Search 4 in use under XP pro. Works rather nicely - but -
although I can use wildcards such as "*" for file names - use of wildcards
for words contained in file content does not work for the word begining.

So, in a content search, bana* will find banana
but
*nana will NOT find banana.

Am unsure if this is by design or if I am goofing somewhere.
Could anyone please advise?

 

[Retroman]

Have Windows Search 4 in use under XP pro. Works rather nicely - but -
although I can use wildcards such as "*" for file names - use of wildcards
for words contained in file content does not work for the word begining.

So, in a content search, bana* will find banana
but
*nana will NOT find banana.

Am unsure if this is by design or if I am goofing somewhere.
Could anyone please advise?

Hello Ken,

This is by design. Windows Search is now word-based and content searches
work from left to right. Try searching on the whole word that contains
the string and then add other criteria to filter the results by date,
location, file extension or whatever is appropriate.

Doug M. in NJ

 

[Ken-T]

Hi Doug,

thanks for that. It's enough to know it was by design and that I was just
not finding the right search format or something.
This particular need for a wildcard couldn#t really be solved by ading to
the search (unless you know of some methoid).

In the docs were Mr.F.Jones (names changed to protect the innocent).
Yes, the user created the docs with no space between..... so since nobody
could remember the first name was tring for *jones mr*jones etc etc

Anyway. Thanks.

 

[Retroman]

Hi Doug,

thanks for that. It's enough to know it was by design and that I was just
not finding the right search format or something.
This particular need for a wildcard couldn#t really be solved by ading to
the search (unless you know of some methoid).

In the docs were Mr.F.Jones (names changed to protect the innocent).
Yes, the user created the docs with no space between..... so since nobody
could remember the first name was tring for *jones mr*jones etc etc

Anyway. Thanks.

Your quite welcome, Ken. In the example you give, did you try searching
on simply "Jones" , with no wild cards? I would expect that to work. Text
following a period should be interpreted as the start of a word.

Doug M. in NJ

 

[Ken-T]

Hi again,


yes, I did test for simply "jones" but there are no finds.
(I suspected that some punctuation counts as a delimiter and found/used
examples during tests, mainly for numbers).
The odd thing is, if I test with a document containing mr,f,jones with
commas instead of periods then yes, it finds "jones"!

Erm.... any ideas?

Thanks.
Ken

 

[Guest]

File names are indexed forward and backward so *search and search* both
work, but not contents.

 

[Donald Lessau]

Hi,

firstly, apologies if this post lands in the wrong groups.

Have Windows Search 4 in use under XP pro. Works rather nicely - but -
although I can use wildcards such as "*" for file names - use of wildcards
for words contained in file content does not work for the word begining.

So, in a content search, bana* will find banana
but
*nana will NOT find banana.

FYI, the content search of XYplorer allows wildcards, and bana* will find
banana.

Don
http://www.xyplorer.com/

 

[Retroman]

Hi again,
yes, I did test for simply "jones" but there are no finds.
(I suspected that some punctuation counts as a delimiter and found/used
examples during tests, mainly for numbers).
The odd thing is, if I test with a document containing mr,f,jones with
commas instead of periods then yes, it finds "jones"!

Erm.... any ideas?

Ken,

Sorry, no. Content searches have limitations and this looks like one of
them.

Doug M. in NJ

 

[Ken-T]

Doug,

thanks indeed for the help.
Very often limitations can be lived with or worked aroung when you know it's
a limitation and not, simply a result of having not used correct syntax.

Ken