Exclude Trash from project search

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Hi everyone,
I use project search a lot, and I love to get this complete list of documents where the phrase or word is in it, but I am quite distracted by all those trash items that appear in the list as well (and cannot be recognised as trash items easily) . So I was looking for a way to exclude Trash (but nothing else) from a project search by default. The available options “Search Manuscript Only” and “Search Binder Selection Only” don’t seem to give me this possibility, unless I would select all items in the binder except the Trash each time I do a search, which is quite cumbersome. The alternative would be to empty the Trash very often, but then I fear to lose maybe some valuable stuff that I need to recover from the Trash in the future.
Does anyone know an easier way how to do this?
Thank you!
Markus

2

I have my Trash at the bottom of the Binder, so to select everything else I just click on the top item in the Binder, scroll to the bottom of it, hold down the Shift key, and click on the bottom item above the Trash. That selects everything apart from the Trash. Not instant, but it doesn’t seem all that cumbersome to me.

Cheers, Martin.

3

Hi,

You should be able to recognise Trash items by the fact that their icons are semi-transparent. There is no way to exclude them from the Trash at the moment, though. That would be a good idea, though, so I’ve added this to the list of future improvements.

All the best,
Keith

4

Thanks Martin and Keith,
both options are definitely an improvement to my current clumsy way of doing it (opening each single document and then choosing “Reveal in Binder” from the context menu to check if its in Trash). And I am proud to have created an item on Keith’s list. :smiley:
Cheers,
Markus

5

I was just about to ask about this and found this thread… alas, from a year ago. :frowning:

I know there are various ways to determine if an item is in the trash, but all of them require extra steps and/or vigilance, and it just shouldn’t be necessary to have to keep track of items you’ve trashed.

The way it works now, you need to keep an eye out for false positives in the search results, or empty the Trash folder before you might otherwise want to. Which means, in effect, that the Trash folder isn’t really a Trash folder, at least when it comes to using search to determine what is and isn’t in the project proper.

Couldn’t “Trash folder” be added to the Options section of the Project Search dropdown, where the non-mutually exclusive options are listed? It’s possible to limit the search to the Draft folder, and that can serve as a Trash exclusion a lot of the time, but it doesn’t help in searching non-Draft areas.

I usually keep my trash pretty empty. Right now though, I’m consolidating non-Draft files and trashing “donor” files after ransacking them for the good stuff, and I’m reluctant to just empty the trash – in fact, being able to search the trash IS really useful. Except when it’s not.

What I’ll do is create a new excluded folder and move items to that from the Trash when trashed items get in the way of reading search results.

Re: semi-transparent icons on Trash items, I’m not seeing that here on Windows in the search results, or anywhere, I don’t think. (I do see something like that for docs that have no content at all.)

6

Alas, pt. 2

That doesn’t work.

Was thinking items moved into an excluded folder would inherit the excluded stats – but I know that’s not how how meta data work… it just slipped my mind.

But there’s also no way to batch the checkbox meta attributes (though it would be sweet if there was.)

7

This option was added ages ago, following this thread:

8

Ah. So I see… but alas (part 3), I’m on what all the kool kids kall Windoze. :wink: 8) :open_mouth:

9

But this is the Mac forum. :slight_smile: Anything in the Mac version is coming to Windows, though, don’t worry!

10

ooo I didn’t realize it was the Mac forum!. :laughing: I found the thread by searching and dropped right into it…

But I’m aware that the Windows side is due for Apple parity and am looking forward to it.

By the way, didn’t the message boards here used to indicate the poster’s platform (when it was filled out in their profiles) along with their name, location, post count, etc? I pretty sure I used to see that, but it’s been a while, and I haven’t been here very long, so could be mistaken.

11

Huh, you’re right. I made some edits last week and must have messed that up! I’ll have to try to restore it.

12

Thanks, KB. Have a good weekend.

13

You too!

14

(Psst…Exclude Trash Documents will be in 1.7 on Windows. :wink: Happy weekend!)

15

So I see! :slight_smile:

Same to you!