I want to be able to search for text – or even more importantly, non-null entries – in a specific meta-data field. It would be VERY useful for organizing plot threads within a book.
For instance, I want to keep track of how often the main character sleeps, and for how many hours. I can create a keyword called “sleep”, but that wouldn’t allow me a simple way of gathering hour-counts.
I can create a meta-data field called “Sleep”, and that almost works. If one document has “1 hour” in that field and another has “1 1/2 hours”, I can search for “hour” in ALL META-DATA (not just the Sleep field), and get a collection of documents that may answer my questions. But it will also include other documents (if any) that also have “hour” entered for other fields.
Another field might be DTR (define the relationship), and I could enter free-form comments whenever a significant plot point arises regarding the relationship between two of my main characters. If any of those comments include the characters “hour”, then … you see the problem.
The outliner view can include “Sleep” and/or “DTR”, and that could be nifty … but only if I can do the right search!
There are plans for looking into expanding the capabilities of custom meta-data in the future. This may include better search options, too. As of right now it’s fairly basic, as you note.
One thing: you can search for everything that has something, by searching for “*”. That will work for any type of search (so you can find only documents that have sidebar notes, for instance). But since all custom meta-data is considered one thing at the moment, it might not be terribly useful for that alone.
I just tried that, searching for * in custom meta-data, and it found ONE document that had nothing in ANY custom meta-data field. I had just emptied a couple of fields in that document a minute or two before, but the problem doesn’t appear to be transient (going away).
Okay, it could be the search index was out of sync. If something like that happens again, you can try using File/Save and Rebuilt Search Indexes. To see that option, you’ll need to hold down the Option key while looking at the menu. You should be able to clear it without needing to reload.