James7 Posts: 5 14/07/2023	James7 Posts: 5 I'm a new user and trying to find how the program works, but in particular the Search function. I looked at the manual, but I think that my question was not answered or perhaps I didn't understand how it works. I'm using the zip package which I extracted to a test directory on my C drive where I run Windows 11. Firstly, does SyMenu find folders on my PC? Secondly, if I test search for "test" I get a result of a document that contains the word "test" in its file name using the FS option and under SY and DS another (text) document that contains the word "test" in the body of the file, However, the response under FS does not apparently look fully into my C drive, but only in one of my external drives. For example, I put a file named test.txt in another of my external drives and SyMenu does not find it with Search. It also doesn't find it on my C drive.
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 14/07/2023	Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 Hi James7 and welcome to the community. I fear this thread will be very long... above all because I can't remember how search works exactly Well let's start from the basics. For first let's read the manual here https://www.ugmfree.it/manual#SearchItems4 SyMenu is able to search the text supplied: inside the items names (SY mode); inside the items names and descriptions (DS mode); in the host PC file system (FS mode). The first two options are related to the programs you installed in SyMenu directly or to the programs SyMenu finds in Windows scanning your Start menu items. Naturally the DS mode can't work with Start menu item descriptions because the shortcuts you find in your Start menu have no description (only comment, sometimes). So SY mode search on: SyMenu logical item name (not exe file name) Start menu item shortcut name (not exe file name) while DS search on: SyMenu logical item name (not exe file name) Start menu item shortcut name (not exe file name) SyMenu logical item description The third option it tied with a completely different field of search: the file system. Again let's read the manual: When you enter in Files system search mode (FS) you can: search files inside SyFolder tagged as searchable (see SyFolderLink); search files and folders inside current unit when your search string starts with the character "\". In this case SyMenu understands the command and starts to enumerate all files and folders currently inside the root of your unit; search files and folders inside a certain unit when your string starts with the unit identifier (i.e "C:"). I can only add that the FS search never opens a file and never searches inside text files. For this purpose you can use other specialized tools such as Everything that we have in the suite. Ok let's start with this information and see if you are good with it.
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James7 Posts: 5 14/07/2023	James7 Posts: 5 Thank you for your detailed reply thanks to which I now understand better the difference between SY mode and DS mode. However I'm still unsure about the results. If I add C:\ as a SyFolder would the Search function not find files inside my C drive? Is it because the Search does not include subdirectories of SyFolders? edited by James7 on 14/07/2023
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 14/07/2023	Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 Nope. It's because by default a SyFolder is a simple link to a folder. If you need that folder (and subfolder) indexed too, you have to check the flag Searchable in the Configuration. This way the content becomes available for the search tool. edited by Gianluca on 14/07/2023
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James7 Posts: 5 14/07/2023	James7 Posts: 5 Thank you again for the reply. The C:\ SyFolder that I created is already checked as Searchable. I cannot upload an image of the window concerned to show you what it's like. Unfortunately, search doesn't work as it is. I can execute the SyFolder from the configuration window, and the Number of Executions part of the window is updated accordingly. "Everything" may be a solution, but it would require me to learn its specific parameters and ideally I would rather avoid having to do that. edited by James7 on 14/07/2023
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 14/07/2023	Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 I can upload mine instead. In the picture you can see three red squares. The first one represents a SyFolder configured to be named "My link to folder". The second one contains the folder path. The third one is the option Searchable set. I want to stress out this concept: SyMenu doesn't index the content of the files contained in my D:\Misc\Down folder and subs, but the file names only!!! You referred to Everything as an alternative but I mention it as a tool that boosts the SyMenu search capacity where SyMenu can't reach out, because Everything indexes the files content too.
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James7 Posts: 5 14/07/2023	James7 Posts: 5 OK here's what's happening now. I'm quite certain of the following. 1. For my external drives the FS mode search doesn't work if the SyFolder is the root directory, for example E:\. There must be one subfolder in order for the search to work otherwise there is no search result in subfolders. 2. For drive C the same applies, but worse than that the path must be longer, up to the folder of interest. A shorter path does not help having a successful search in subfolders. Thank you for your interest in this matter and I hope that the above may clarify what I'm faced with.
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 14/07/2023	Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 It's interesting and confirmed on my side too. I have to investigate it better because there's probably a bug in the folder resolution when the folder is the root. Probably the two issues will be solved with a right resolution. Stay tuned!!!
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Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 14/07/2023	Gianluca Administrator Posts: 1274 Ok I found it. It's not a folder path resolution problem but a security problem. On a disk root you have for sure a system folder called System Volume Information and you are not allowed to enter or enumerate the content of that one. When SyMenu tries to read that folder, it crashes the search entirely. Anyway I will fix it sometime because it's a bug even if I suggest you not use SyMenu for this kind of indexing. SyMenu doesn't cache the FS searches so everytime you want to search for something in a large file list (C:\ and subs for example) it'll take a lot of time. For this kind of use, think about other tools more specialized in file system tasks.
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James7 Posts: 5 14/07/2023	James7 Posts: 5 Thank you for your answer and I'm glad that I wasn't going crazy after all! I'll be using Everything until a "native" solution is found for search in SyMenu. In any case I'll reduce the scope of the files population to be included in searches.
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