Find in Database fails

I must be missing something, but…

I highlight a folder, which contains an html file. This file contains a phrase, “Gambero Verde” (no quotes).

I hit command+option+F, for Find All.

I type in “Gambero Verde” (no quotes)

I hit Return, and get the Search - No items found! error window.

No exclusions I can see have been selected - DT is searching all databases, etc.

When I open the html file manually by dbl clicking, then hit command+F to find, and type “Gambero Verde”, it finds it fine.

What am I missing? Many thanks in advance…

I assume you are using the query field in the Toolbar. Because you can’t see the checked search options unless you click on the little triangle to see them, it’s easy to do a search with the wrong options, which may result in an incorrect result.

Personally, I perform all searches using the full Search window. Not only is it much easier to see the settings, there are more options and features available.

Hi Bill,

No, it doesn’t work with the full Search window, either. However, when I cut out a section of text that contains the search term I’m looking for, and create a new rtf item with it, DT successfully finds the term in that new item.

It’s as if DT weren’t able to read html files (or this html file). Or as if it hadn’t fully indexed them.

I really want to get to the bottom of this. Search failures are one of the scariest things to encounter when one is thinking about switching from one database/infomanager to another. Few things worse than having data in there, and not being able to find it!

Thanks again for your help.

Cheers,
Tom Mueller

Has the HTML file been captured into the database, or is it merely one that you have loaded from a bookmark or link and are viewing in the internal browser? If the latter, its text content hasn’t been indexed into the database.

I dragged it from an external folder into one of DT folders. Should this capture its contents? I assumed so, but now see that I may have had to do File/Import to achieve this. Am I right?

Is there some way of capturing the contents of all files dragged into DT folders (ie not officially imported via the import function)?

Many thanks again for your help.

Importing by dragging an external file into DEVONthink will capture the file in it’s native filetypye.

If you had dragged an HTML file into the database, the captured document would be searchable.

But if you had dragged a bookmark file into the database, it would have no content, and so would not be searchable. If you select the bookmark, the referenced page would open in the browser, but the page is “out in the Web” and won’t be searchable unless you clip it to DEVONthink.

Does that help?

Thanks for your patient and continuing help, Bill. I don’t know what to say - I dragged an htm file into the database - it was certainly not a bookmark. Yet DT seems not to have captured it, because it does not appear in searches.

Don’t know quite how to proceed here - whether this is a bug in the program, or some strange setting that I’m not aware of.

Please export that file to the Finder, zip it and attach it to a message to Support - and reference this forum thread. Thanks!