Searching Across Files

Searching across a folder

Finding something you know you wrote down, without remembering which file it was in.

In the document you are in

Ctrl+F.

The bar takes the caret, so typing goes into the search box rather than into your document. As you type, the first match is found, scrolled to and counted -- the bar tells you how many there are.

Enter, or Find Next, steps between matches without changing the document.

Across a folder

In the find bar, In Folder.... Pick a folder, and every document beneath it is searched.

Results open in a panel below. Each row names a file and shows the matching line. Clicking one:

1. opens that document in a new tab,
2. scrolls to the match,
3. highlights it.

This works when the row is below the fold and when the document is much taller than the window.

Replace

Replace and Replace All work on the current document only.

Replace All is a single undo entry -- one Ctrl+Z puts all of them back.

There is no replace-across-files, deliberately. Changing many files at once with no way to preview what would happen and no undo that spans them is an operation that needs machinery this product does not have. It is absent rather than present and dangerous.

To change many files, open them and do it one at a time, or use a tool built for it.

Finding by meaning rather than by string

Organize > Related Notes answers a different question: not where does this exact text appear but what else have I written that is about this. It works off the notes index -- tags and keywords -- rather than a literal search.

It is the better tool when you cannot remember the wording, which is most of the time. It needs the index, so it needs a privacy profile that permits one; see Privacy.

What it does not do

It does not index the contents of files you have not opened. The index knows about documents you have worked on. A folder search reads the files right then, and a folder full of documents this product has never opened is searchable by string and not by relatedness.

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