Tips & Tricks Storage Management

Easily Search By File Contents

Find out where the UltraSearch content search comes in handy.

Blog Author Joachim Marder

Joey

CEO
UltraSearch Professional for your content search
Published on 31.08.2021

Professional work is structured work. So much for the theory.

However, we all know that in everyday business there are always moments when everything has to be done quickly and sorting individual work files get messy. If you work on a shared file system with colleagues, e.g. network drives, in which several team members work, sooner or later there will be chaos. 

You have to search for important files in the file system that you may not have used for a long time. As a result, employees spend a lot of time every day just searching for work material.

We think this time can be spent better: With the UltraSearch Professional file content search, you will solve this task easily!

When to count on UltraSearch’s file content search?

Are you looking for a file you can’t remember the name of but still know its contents? No matter if you are searching for an Office file, a PDF document or source code: UltraSearch Professional finds files by their contents. Check out the use cases of our customers:

What about an important PDF file that got lost in the limbo of your file system? Years ago, an agency designed a website for one of its customers. While in concept phase, many idea sheets and mind maps were created and saved to a PDF file. Now, a few years later, the customer has a question concerning a specific feature that was implemented – a multi tagging system.

To answer this question, the former project managers have to look it up in the original document. With UltraSearch Professional, the agency can use the terms “multi tagging” or “multiple tags” to search for the project directory. The project PDF was found within seconds.

The UltraSearch content search comes in handy for developers, too. Let’s imagine a developer is looking in his repository for a specific class or unit to reuse in an ongoing project. With UltraSearch Professional, the code snippets can be found within the source code – no matter if it’s .html, .css, .pas or a .cs file!

It’s as easy as performing a normal content search using keywords: First, select the drive you want to look through. Next, enter the class or unit name you a looking for. UltraSearch Professional immediately begins to scan all files on your selected drives for the desired contents.

 

Search for files on multiple drives simultaneously – on local drives as well as in the cloud.

Modern, cooperative work doesn’t happen on local drives, but on shared file systems. That’s why many work files nowadays are stored on internal network drives or on externally hosted cloud services. One of our customers, a medium-sized publisher, was in the middle of its SharePoint migration process.

That means that many files were already stored in the cloud, but some files still remained on its on-premise servers. To find publications or manuscripts, the publisher had to look through multiple drives at the same time to search efficiently.

UltraSearch Professional can search for file contents on all drives at the same time as long as they are mounted to the Windows file explorer. We suggest synchronizing all relevant files which are stored on SharePoint with your own device. Next, select all drives you want UltraSearch to scan through.

The publisher now can search for PDF files that include the keywords “copyright” and “2012” to find publications with the year 2012.

 

Is your content search too slow? Try our filters and search syntax!

Especially when searching through multiple drives that already store huge amounts of data, the content search can take more time than expected. That’s why we have implemented clever filters and a complex search syntax in UltraSearch Professional!

In most cases, you already know which file type or file extension the file you are looking for has.

That’s were our file type filter comes in: We group different file extensions together to a specific category to cover all possible cases. To give an example, our file type “Office Files and Documents” covers Word, Excel, PowerPoint as well as PDF files. Are you looking for a specific email in your email archive? 

Use the file type “mail files” to narrow down your search. Additionally, UltraSearch Professional allows you to configure the predefined file types or to create your own.

Besides the file type filters, UltraSearch offers a complex search syntax for power users to make the content search even faster and more efficient. Logical expressions like “content:” and “extension” just like “AND” or “OR” conjunctions allow a very powerful and narrowed down file content search.

It’s also possible to use “AND” and “OR” expressions to link keywords in the search box on the right side.

 

So, let's summarize: With the UltraSearch Professional file content search, you no longer have to go searching for files yourself. You can find files by their contents on different drives at the same time and narrow your search with clever filters.

 

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