There seems to be a bug in the “Search” function inasmuch as it doesn’t search Comments and Footnotes.
I spent a while trying to find something I was pretty sure was in a footnote, but the search function wouldn’t bring back any of the single word variations I tried.
Frustrated (and distracted, as I had now lost focus) I tried searching for a specific phrase that was in a footnote and, regardless of whether I select “All” or “Notes” a a search option, the string was not returned.
As a user, I would like the search function to include text in footnotes.
Can this go on the “fix” list for the next update please?
Don’t expect any fixes for v. 1.9.x, as according to the Lit&Lat blog and announcements, they intend to release a beta of Windows v. 3 at the same time as Mac Scrivener v. 3 later this year. I don’t know if v. 3 will provide for searching inspector footnotes and comments, though; it’s not something I’ve ever had to try to do on Mac v. 2.x, and obviously can’t comment on v. 3.
But in your case, for the moment, I would convert the inspector footnotes into inline footnotes temporarily, as I would think search would then find your text. You can convert them back again to inspector footnotes when you’ve found what you want. On the Mac the relevant commands are under Format > Convert.
You can also navigate in Windows Explorer to the Docs folder for your project, and do an Explorer search with the desired phrase in quotes. This will find the phrase in document types Scrivener doesn’t index such as HTMLs and PDFs, a great advantage. For Scrivener comments, be sure the file type “comments” is indexed: Control Panel > Indexing Options > Advanced > File Types.
You can copy the filenames (and thus the desired DocIDs) to clipboard via Home > Copy path . Alas, there’s no easy way to open a doc in Scrivener by DocID. The cumbersome workaround: once you find the footnote, you can locate the document by matching the DocID in Explorer, then use Explorer’s Preview Pane to identify a phrase you can search for in Scrivener to find and load the doc.
