Why doesn't QS find my documents?

[lilmoch]

I don't understand why QS has such a hard time finding my documents.
It does great with applications. But when I invoke QS and type the
name of a file, it often doesn't show any results. I know the file is
there, as I can navigate to it. It's not a new file, so it should be
in the index. Why would this be happening?

[Howard Melman]

See the 2nd item in the FAQ at the end of the user manual:
http://mysite.verizon.net/hmelman/Quicksilver.pdf

[lilmoch]

On Feb 13, 8:06 pm, Howard Melman <hmel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> See the 2nd item in the FAQ at the end of the user manual:http://mysite.verizon.net/hmelman/Quicksilver.pdf
>

Thanks for your reply. As far as I can tell, the second item in the
FAQ is:

"Quicksilver plays or shows notifications for the wrong iTunes track"

I did find a question in the FAQ related to spotlight, but it still
wasn't clear to me why QS doesn't find a file when I type its filename
in the search box. I'm not trying to use QS to search for text within
a file, I just want it to find the file itself. According to the FAQ,
that is well within the capability of QS.

[Howard Melman]

Forgive me, I was looking at a newer version...

Quicksilver doesn't find my files
By default Quicksilver finds files on your Desktop and in your
Documents folder but it doesn't scan very far into those locations.
It scans things on the Desktop but not inside folders on the Desktop,
that is it scans the Desktop to a depth of 1. Quicksilver scans the ~/
Documents folder to a depth of 2. To scan deeper, clone the source so
it's in the Custom set in the catalog and editable. To do this,
select the Users set and the Documents source, open the drawer and
select the Attributes tab. Click on Create Copy to create a new
source in Custom named Documents. Select the new source and click on
the

[lilmoch]

Thank you so much! That did the trick!

>  pastedGraphic.pdf
> 6KDownload
>
>   button to show a drawer with three tabs. Select the Source Options  
> tab and select the depth. Do not just set it to infinite, the catalog  
> will be too large and Quicksilver will slow to a crawl. See the  
> Catalog section for some tips.

[WilliamG]

Hi,

I came across this thread when looking for a different issue. For some
reason, some files are found as duplicated. i.e. I search for a file
name called "Journal 1.doc" by invoking QS and typing "jour." It finds
all my journal documents, but doubles of all of them. e.g. QS finds
Journal 1, Journal 1, Journal 2, Journal 2 etc etc. I only have one of
each file, and QS finds doubles in the very same folder. Is there a
way to fix this? The files are in the Documents folder.

Thanks,
William

[Howard Melman]

I suspect they're probably being picked up via the Recent Files
catalog source as well. Try disabling it.

Howard

[WilliamG]

Thanks for this reply! Hopefully that will fix it!

Thanks again,
William

[WilliamG]

Unfortunately, that didn't fix it. Still finding doubles of files in
my Documents folder, despite removing the check mark from "recent
items."

Any other ideas?

[Howard Melman]

You might have to rescan the catalog after unchecking the box.
Activate QS and with the command window up type ⌘R (that's cmd-R).

Another thought is that your quicksilver is scanning a backup drive
and finding the item there.

If that doesn't do it and a visual scan of your other catalog sources
doesn't point to where the doubles are, there is a Show Source in
Catalog action. You may need to enable it in the Action preferences.
Bring up one of the files in the first pane and use the Show Source in
Catalog action. The catalog should appear with the source
highlighted. Do this for both duplicates. It may be hard to know
which is which as their order might change in the results list, but at
some point it should work.

[WilliamG]

Thank you once again for the reply. I found under User there was
"Recent Items" which I had taken the check out of. I had failed to
notice a second "Recent Items" under the Quicksilver tab in the
Catalog, and have now removed the check mark there. Hopefully that
fixes it. Will report back later... :-)

You've been a great help.

Wil

[Howard Melman]

You might get a lot out of the manual...
http://mysite.verizon.net/hmelman/Quicksilver.pdf

Howard

[WilliamG]

Haha. Probably, but I actually looked there and must have missed
something. Anyway, it works now, it appears! Thanks!

On Mar 9, 9:28 pm, Howard Melman <hmel...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You might get a lot out of the manual...http://mysite.verizon.net/hmelman/Quicksilver.pdf

[WilliamG]

Well now I'm having another problem. QS isn't updating folder contents
in that Documents folder. So for example, I have Paper 1.doc and Paper
2.doc. It doesn't see those files until I specifically go into QS
Catalog, pick "Documents", click on the "i" to bring up the options,
click "Contents" and click the reload button. Then the documents
appear. I have it set to Rescan every 10 minutes, but manually
rescanning does nothing until I open the actual contents and click the
rescan. Very strange...

Any ideas?

Thanks again...

[WilliamG]

I should be more precise: Anything just in "Documents" and not in a
folder within documents is picked up immediately. I have a folder
called "Work" in Documents, and anything in there isn't picked up
unless I open Documents catalog and hit Contents and Rescan.
Basically, a level down below Documents isn't being picked up, which
is really weird. It doesn't happen in any other folders...

[WilliamG]

And what this also means is that if I delete a file from a folder
within Documents, QS never updates that the file has been deleted
either! So to make it do that I have to also rescan the contents of
the folder. Curiouser and curiouser!

Bit saddened by this all. I hope there's a simple fix...

Thanks once again,
William

On Mar 10, 5:56 pm, WilliamG <wgr...@gmail.com> wrote:

[WilliamG]

Ugh. I've spent quite a while on this now, and for no reason at all
that I can find it still doesn't work. Howard, I implore you, save me
from the madness!

William

[Howard Melman]

Which catalog source is this? If it's the builtin Documents one it's
set to scan only 2 levels down. Though IIUC what you're describing is
that opening the drawer to the contents tab makes a difference as to
what's scanned. I've never heard of that before.

You could try quiting QS, removing the catalog files, and then
restarting QS to start anew.

Howard

[WilliamG]

Ahhh finally! Something was seriously bugged in QS. I had tried
everything, including full reinstalls. I just installed Leopard on a
brand new MacBook Pro today, and QS worked fine in the documents
folder. So I removed everything from MY documents folder, reloaded QS,
and then put everything back. And now it works. Weird, but it works
finally.

Thanks Howard for all the above help. Not sure what the deal was, but
it works now. :-)

[Howard Melman]

On Mar 11, 2008, at 12:25 AM, WilliamG wrote:

> Ahhh finally! Something was seriously bugged in QS. I had tried
> everything, including full reinstalls. I just installed Leopard on a
> brand new MacBook Pro today, and QS worked fine in the documents
> folder. So I removed everything from MY documents folder, reloaded QS,
> and then put everything back. And now it works. Weird, but it works
> finally.
>
> Thanks Howard for all the above help. Not sure what the deal was, but
> it works now. :-)

It seems to be working well on my new macbook pro too :)

All except the User Account plugin, but that's a known problem.

Howard