I’m blown away by how well OmniOutliner files are displayed in DTPO when indexed.
They show up with all their columns visible, and the disclosure triangles expand and collapse outline levels in the DT viewing pane just as they do when the file is opened in OO.
So here’s my question. I’ve indexed several OO files in DTPO, and did a Find search for a particular search string. DTPO showed me results instantly, pointing to which files the search strings are in … but since the outlines are lengthy, I can’t figure out how to get DTPO to find the actual search string and show it to me.
How do I get DTPO to show me where in an indexed file the search string actually is?
The OmniOutliner preview is not unique to DEVONthink. To display OmniOutliner files (.oo3) OS X and applications use a “Quick Look” plugin provided by Omni Group. This enables the preview you see in DEVONthink, Finder, Together, and anything else that utilizes the Quick Look feature. Numerous other developers provide these Quick Look plugins for their own file types – which is why you can preview documents made with Excel, Word, Pages, Scrivener, and so on.
The key word here is “preview”. The previews cannot be searched. DEVONthink happens to be able to find which .oo3 documents contain your search string because internally .oo3 saves your data in a plain-text XML file – i.e., a file that is searchable. So, when you get search results like you described, DEVONthink knows which file contains the string, but it cannot show you where because of limitations in the third-party Quick Look technology.