[Snipping the part about "preview" option, since now I suspect that part,
as well, was part of my confusing the old v3 payware into the mix with the
current free PowerDesk utilities)
Thanks, Karen.
I'm asking as I assume you are familiar with both items below:
I would be comparing the Find to the find function in W98SE, which is
pretty good.
What features do you feel it has better than W98 find?
Let me start the answer in reverse. The part about the W98 Find that is
better has to do with selection of which partitions.
I have seven local partitions; one CD; and then a large removable drive
(archive partition); plus sometimes more letters, when I hook up an
additional removable drive. This situation makes quick selection to do
with partitions important to me.
With the W98 Find, for the Look In field, I can select, with one click,
all local drives at once. Or I can select all drives at once, to include
my removable drives. It is also a single click to select one particular
partition.
With PDFind, you have a whole bunch of little checkboxes for individually
selecting, one by one, which of the partitions you want the search to hit.
When I want to select all partitions at once, or else all local partitions
at once, that is far too tedious for me, to use all its little checkboxes.
You also don't have the option to paste anything into there, for drives, as
you can with Windows Find, eg "c:\; d:\." In short, the constant checking
and unchecking of the boxes, it's too much carpal for me. OTOH, for someone
working with only a couple of drive letters, this whole issue won't matter.
That is the only big aspect of the PDFind utility, that comes to mind, as
being inferior to the W98 Find.
[Search Date, Time, Recent] ================================================
The thing I really like to do is specify time of day to
filter, now I can only do "within the last day".
The PD Find utility is very good for this. You have one field for Date,
and another for Time.
Date: Ignore | On | Before | After | Between | Not Between
Time: All the above, plus... +/- 1 Hour of | +/- 6 Hours of
If you select...
Date: On
Time: +/- 1 Hour of
It auto-inserts current date and time. Therein you have very quick access
to a search for all modified during the past hour.
[File Attributes tab: R H S] ===============================================
Another useful feature of PDFind. One of its extra tabs is for Attributes.
Read-only Hidden System
I've had use for this a number of times. For instance, it's a fast way to
mass change attributes of files which are spread out in various locations.
Tip. Maybe everyone already knew this instinctively, but for me it didn't
dawn until relatively late. The grey checkmarks in the selection boxes mean
indifferent, and that's the default. Click to make them black checkmarks -
to specify files with specifically those attributes. Or click to clear
the checkmarks - in order to exclude from the search files with specific
attributes.
Quick mentions about some specific hidden Windows files.
1. PDFind will show all of your index.dat files, while the Windows Find
hides most of them.
2. Neither of these will show your desktop.ini files. For that situation,
I use winfile.exe.
(I also often use winfile when I need to clear the system attribute.
Meander... For example, when I need to deal with the Fonts folder
directly, I clear the system attribute, and temporarily move its
desktop.ini)
[File Attributes tab: search for folders: y/n] =============================
+/- folders
This overcomes the common annoyance with the Windows Find. Often you want
it to list only files, not include folder names. One rough workaround I
use is to enter "Size is: At Least 0 KB" as part of its search criteria.
The drawback of course is that then I won't see any 0-byte files in my
results list.
The advantage with PDfind, with the +/- folders in a search, is that you
have the options of precisely excluding its listing of folders; or the
reverse, have it only list folders.
[Results List, Saving] =====================================================
In addition to "Save Search," like the Windows Find has, handy to archive
a results list, plus to relaunch the same search...PDFind has also other
options. Print List. Copy List to Clipboard.
The Copy List to Clipboard operation gives all the displayed information:
size, date, time, attributes, path.
[Results List, More Operations...] =========================================
Move To, Copy To, Mail, Recycle, Delete.
Ok I can't say that these are a big deal. Your explorer context menu can
have the operations that are important to you. I should mention: In version
4, it is missing an "Open Containing Folder" menu item. That was a big PITA
for me. And the only explorer context menu extension I found to make up
for this, it was not satisfactory (opened in single "my computer" view,
ignoring system settings for hierarchical + detailed view).
[Results List. Select Files...] ============================================
The selection dialog lets you choose filename type refinement (straight
name, or wildcard), and attributes refinement, the r/h/s stuff, as well as
+/- folders.
[Refine...] [Append...] ====================================================
Successive, aggregate, rounds of searching. Pretty cool, this feature. And
good for those of us who like to be too lazy to keep on top of regexp stuff
that other search utilities use.
[Speed] ====================================================================
Identical. It always felt very close, and just now I tested. Had them both
look for all files named readme.txt on a path, and they came up with the
588 files result at exactly the same instant.
[xyz?] =====================================================================
Despite how long this listing has become, it is not exhaustive. But I did
try to cover the main distinctions, those that stand out to me.
.. . . .
PDFind vs Other Find utils
What I like about PDFind is how it so closely resembles the Windows Find,
plus sits in the same locations, so you don't have to try to develop new
habits, or shift amongst foreign interfaces. For filename + filetype +
filedate, etc, type searches, I prefer it over other third-party utilities.
(The other search utilities, where I do need those, it's for doing a
better job on the "containing text" aspect of things. Where you start
wanting features such as showing a contextual excerpt of the text matches;
or fancy operators (Near OR AND etc) for finding the text; or replace
abilities; etc etc.)
.. . . .
PDFind 4 vs PDFind 5
Search refinements added:
1. File attributes tab has an option to include searching in an archive.
2. An extra tab, to limit which file types extension for the search.
File menu operations added:
1. Save|Open Search settings
2. Open Containing Folder
Maybe a few smaller things too, that don't much stand out for me. Definitely
the version 5 has more features than the version 4.
But I don't want to over-emphasize that, and want to say the version 4 is
still very much worth using.
Self-interest, why I say the above. Version 4, I've already found which
minimum registry entries it needs (as a standalone from the PowerDesk
installation) - to integrate it into the Windows interface. For version 5,
I had not yet finished trying to get that solved.
Mike, I have presumed that you would want to have this in those Windows
menu locations? Startmenu > Find, for example. Is the presumption correct?
Or would it be that you would in fact want it otherwise, to use this only
as a standard executable, to launch separately and not from special
locations?
(Btw, version 5, it wants registry entries no matter how you place it,
even as a standalone executable.)
