Search doesn't work as expected

I’m having some trouble with the search function.

For example, I just added a bookmarked web page to DTPO (using the Safari extension). It had the word “inflammation” in the title. I added the tags “epa” and “dha” to it when I filed it.

However, when I search for “inflammation epa dha” it doesn’t appear in the results list.

It just occurred to me that maybe the content of bookmarked items doesn’t get indexed in the database, and thus won’t appear in the search? If that’s true, I’m in big trouble. I wish I would have known that before, because I’ve got thousands of bookmarks I thought would be searchable.

Well, I’ve answered my own question. I now face days of wading through my database and converting all of the bookmarks to web archives. Of course it’s my own fault for not learning more about the search function before I decided to use bookmarks instead of web archives or PDFs.

Is there any faster way to do it other than clicking on each record, then right-clicking in the window and choosing “capture web archive”?

Try the script posted in this thread. Use a smart group to find your bookmarks and run the script.

The thread quoted above can be found by searching for “script web archive”.

You’re a lifesaver!

Do the web archives get filed in the same location (folder, in my case) the bookmarks are in?

Also, where can I find information about how to use scripts with DTPO? I’m not sure what to do with that script code.

Okay, got it figured out. This is saving me hours of headache.

I realize I do still have a question, though. Why don’t tags come up in the search results? In the previous example, I had added two tags to a bookmark. Shouldn’t the tags come up in the search, even if it’s a bookmark? And if I tag a web archive when I add it, shouldn’t that come up if I enter the tags as search terms?

Tags are not recognized as query terms in a search.

But there’s a way to add tags as search criteria.

User the full Search page (Tools > Search). Click on the “Advanced” button. You can add additional filters here, much as you would do in the smart group editor. Yes, you can look for documents that have a certain tag, and if you wish, that can be part of a more complex set of criteria.

Thanks for clarifying, Bill.

It seems that the text entered into the comments box is recognized in searches. So I think I’ll start adding my “tags” (which I had intended to use as potential search terms) in the comments box instead.

You could also switch to the Tags view (Command-6), Command-click on the tag(s) that you want to search on, set the toolbar search option to ‘In Selection’, and enter ‘inflammation’ as your search term. Command-clicking on multiple tags in the Tags view shows all documents tagged with all the selected tags.