Desktop Search Programs

By Gerry Morris

I receive around forty emails a day, of which about two-thirds contain non spam information. In my office most phone messages are relayed to me by email if I am out of the office or otherwise unable to take the call. When I’m in the office and taking calls, most of the time the caller information is relayed to me through computer instant messaging. (We use Yahoo IM). Every day my legal assistant lists in an email the day’s mail. That way I am notified of important incoming mail and I also have an additional record of when it was received that is on my work computer as well as my laptop and home computer. When a document arrives by fax or courier I’m also notified by email that the document has been received and scanned. In short, we rely heavily on email for interoffice communication.

The problem is that with an average of forty emails a day, to find a particular email even if I can remember the year in which I received it, I still have to search through about 14,600 emails. I could cut down on the number I have to search through by creating different folders in which to categorize and store read emails. But, frankly my experience with that has been that I won’t take the time to move each email one by one into its proper folder. Given my limitations I’ve decided to store read emails in a folder labeled for the year in which I received them.

Searching through that many emails using the Microsoft Outlook search feature takes a while. For instance, searching through about 12,300 emails for the word “technology” in the subject line and body of the text took over three minutes. Even assuming I chose the correct search terms the first time and only had to run the search once, a few searches like that in a day eat up some time. Fortunately, there is an alternative.

The major Web search engines, Yahoo, Google and MSN all now offer desktop search programs that can be downloaded free. The desktop search programs basically cache every piece of readable data on your computer and allow it to be searched in much the same manner as the Web search engine counterparts search Internet web sites. Once the set up and initial indexing is completed any email, chat or text document on your computer can be found about as fast as you can type the search terms.

I tried the Yahoo and Google versions and settled on Google because the Google search program can be configured to search network drives and the Yahoo program cannot. I didn’t try the MSN version. Once installed, the Google desktop search program began to “crawl” my computer and network drive to index all the data. The indexing function takes place while the computer is idle so that it doesn’t interfere with normal computer usage. My computer was idle for about an hour while I was out for lunch and when I returned the process was complete. (Indexing of newly added material also takes place in the background). Once the indexing process is completed, depending on the selected options, the program allows search terms to be typed into a search box on the desktop or the task bar as well as into the familiar Google web page. An extra link appears on the web page to go to the “Desktop” search function. You can also eliminate the search boxes on the desktop and task bar. There is also a search box that appears directly on the menu bar of Outlook for searched limited to email.

The search with the word “technology” using the desktop search link on the Google web page took less than a second to yield results that included 1702 emails, 176 files and 52 hits from my web history. Links at the top of the page allow me to go to only the email, files or web history result. I refined the search to “technology column” and in less than a second had results listing 62 emails and 24 files in the familiar Google format that contains enough text from the documents and emails to allow me to locate the one I’m looking for. It’s that simple.

Those of you who use Macs are probably chuckling right now because the latest Mac operating system has this feature built in. The new version of Windows due out later this year also has a desktop search feature. For PC users with one of the presently available versions of Windows, one of the desktop search programs is simply a must have add-on as far as I’m concerned.

To download the Google Desktop Search program go to the Google home page at www.google.com. Then click on the link near the top of the page that is labeled “more.” This will take you to a page with a link under the “Search” category labeled “desktop.” Click on that link and you’ll see download instructions.

When the program is first installed it also installs a bar on the task bar called “Gadgets.” This is a collection of things such as clock, news tickers, weather information and the like that can be popped up or hidden by pressing the shift key twice. I have deactivated this feature by selecting “none” in the setup options activated by right clicking the system tray icon for the program. In the “preferences” option you can configure the program to search only certain items like emails and text files rather than the names of media files, web history and other materials. Here you can also chose a network drive to search.

Google will search the chat logs of the most popular IM services. This feature is important to me because we use Yahoo chat extensively to relay messages. Interestingly, Google will search MSN and Google chat logs but to search Yahoo chat logs a plug-in must be downloaded and installed. That plug-in is available through Google by going to the same page where you downloaded the Desktop Search program and clicking the link for “Google Gadgets and Plug-ins.” On the page that appears click the link labeled “Indexing Plug-ins.” This will take you to a page with a lot of indexing plug-ins including one called “YIM Archive Plug-in.” But, here’s something I learned by trial and error. Don’t click the download link. Click on the link with the program description. This will take you to a download page. On that page click the link labeled “Learn More.” That link will take you to a page with a link that is labeled, “Download Binary v1.3.” This is the version you want. The version associated with the other download buttons has a bug that causes the program not to index messages from people using aliases. Since we use our real names as aliases (rather than the Yahoo screen name) in our office, the first version was basically worthless to us. After I figured out that there was an updated version available and installed it, the archived chats are now included in my Google desktop searches.

Google won’t index documents scanned as an image unless they have been converted to text. Paperport, the program I use for basic document management has a feature that will automatically convert scanned documents to text and store the text in a search file that can be searched with the program’s “All-in-One” search feature. The search program is not as versatile as Google. Paperport 11 contains an expanded search feature. I recently upgraded to Paperport 11 and will be writing on the upgrade soon.

E. G. “Gerry” Morris is a solo practitioner and has practiced law for over 27 years in Austin, Texas. He is certified as a Criminal Law Specialist by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. His firm web site is at www.egmlaw.com. Email your comments and questions to Gerry at tech@egmlaw.com .