Apologies if this duplicates someone else. The Find in Document (Ctrl+F) tool is not working optimally. I’m pretty sure this is a new problem, as I don’t remember all this stuff annoying me so much until about a month ago.
Preference for Contains / starts with / whole word etc does not stay selected.
For some reason, the search window seems to default to “whole word” (which isn’t even the top item on the drop-down).
New search term does not overwrite old one.
If I have the Find in Document window open already and I hit Ctrl+ F again and start typing, it just adds on to my previous search term, instead of overwriting. I can’t remember if this always worked this way?
Find window has trouble resizing between monitors and never reopens to where I moved it/scaled it previously.
(I reported this separately on an existing thread about resizing problems.)
Aaand sometimes I could swear that Find just…doesn’t find. Often it is because I didn’t notice (1) or (2). But sometimes…I’m literally staring at a word on the page, and it keeps telling me “Not found.” The only fix then is to close the Find window and reopen it…but then that’s annoying because of (3).
The software has not changed recently, so it’s more likely a matter of shifting usage causing a change in behaviour.
The Find panel is a one-off tool where you set things up and run a search, yes, but it is also a helper tool for project search. When you invoke a project search, which can be done even when clicking on a search collection tab, the Find tool is configured to match that search’s criteria to the best of its ability. In this way you can easily transition from running a search for “word”, click into the editor, and hit F3 without even bringing up Find.
If you leave the Find panel open, it should retain whatever settings you have made, giving you a way to passively override that behaviour.
As to the rest, all of this are matters of interface polish, which are widespread and will be gradually fixed in time. There is no way for me to say when it will improve because there are many other things that need to be improved, not just the Find panel.
Aaand sometimes I could swear that Find just…doesn’t find. Often it is because I didn’t notice (1) or (2). But sometimes…I’m literally staring at a word on the page, and it keeps telling me “Not found.” The only fix then is to close the Find window and reopen it…
Try just clicking back and forth between the text view you want to search within and the window. I’ve never seen that happen specifically, but maybe it’s confused by where you clicked last.
Hi – I’m revisiting this because I came across what I think is a failure of Project Search. But given that I seemed to have misunderstood the parameters for the Find panel, maybe there’s something I’m missing?
For documents that need changes, I’ve been putting “TK [whatever needs to be changed]” in my Notes field for that document. Then to find all those, I search TK, and they all pop up. I even set up a Collection for this.
But recently my TKs Collection was empty and I knew I had some, so I manually ran the search. Nothing. Then went through each document in the binder, one by one, and found my TKs in some Notes fields. Ran the Project Search again. Still nothing.
I’ve tried changing all the Project Search parameters, to the broadest possible, and it still doesn’t find TK in the Notes field. (I have screengrabs.)
Weirdly when I search for another specific word in a Notes field, one I’m staring at…that document shows in Project Search. BUT if I search for a word that’s in the Notes field where there is also a TK…Project Search does not find that. Is it a sign there’s something corrupted or otherwise wrong with that particular document, maybe? (Project Search does find words in the document itself. Just not in the Notes field.)
Do you mean that if, for e.g., you search for “test”, you’ll find it but only if “TK” isn’t anywhere in your text ?? (That would be extremely weird…)
As for your issue otherwise, the explanation that comes to mind is that you would inadvertently have toggled the documents from your search results collection as excluded from compile, and presently have your search range only set for documents that are included in compile…
Yes, basically corresponds. I had only Notes selected when I was first trying it. But had both included and excluded checked, and all words.
Do you mean that if, for e.g., you search for “test”, you’ll find it but only if “TK” isn’t anywhere in your text ?? (That would be extremely weird…)
Yes, that did happen. And it was extremely weird. I had, for ex, a Notes field where I’d written “TK blahblahblah Marina blahblahblah,” and another Notes field where I’d written “blahblahblah Marina blahblahblah,” and when I ran Project Search for “Marina” it found only the second case.
Perhaps try and add TK to a note that otherwise properly returns “Marina” as a search result.
– If search finds then “Marina” → the issue is with the notes. (Something must have happened, making them unsearchable.)
– If search then no longer finds “Marina” → Aliens.
It’d be nice to see a screenshot (like mine) of your search settings.
For a start, I would use the File ▸ Save and Rebuild Search Indexes menu command, to make sure you aren’t working with a messed up search index for whatever reason. Scrivener is usually pretty good about detecting when the search index needs to be rebuilt, but given its open format nature, it can get out of sync with the data if other things are impacting the project (like cloud sync tools).
The next thing I would try is the “Reset Search Options” trigger, toward the bottom of the search options menu (where you would saved a search as a collection). While you did say you set things to its broadest settings, that should eliminate any settings you overlooked that might be constraining the search.
What you describe is very strange though, so I would suspect something more along the lines of the first problem.
Thanks, everybody. Unfortunately, I was on deadline yesterday, so I had to finish the job and clear out all my TKs in my Notes fields.
Going in again today (after closing Scrivener and restarting), I can’t recreate the issue. So maybe it was a problem with the search indexes, and it fixed itself? I did not know about these at all, and given that I’ve had this particular Scrivener project going for, oh, eight years, it doesn’t surprise me some glitches crept in.
FWIW, when I said I set things to “broadest settings,” I did in fact mean that I had done the “Reset Search Options” trigger.
Also to answer Vincent_Vincent, yes, the issue was the Notes field – but only specific Notes fields on some specific documents. (Most of them worked fine.) I think we can say we’re alien-free.
