(Archived) EN Document Search - Grammar updates?

[rimez 12]

The newest feature in EN (for premium users) which allows searching through MS Office documents is awesome. 

 

I would like to know if the Search Grammar will be updated to include searching ONLY through documents?  It would be nice to be able to ignore notes and ONLY search through documents. It would also be great to be able to define the type of office document to search (i.e. doc, xls, ppt, etc). 

 

Current Grammar: http://dev.evernote.com/documentation/cloud/chapters/search_grammar.php

[gazumped 12,038]

The newest feature in EN (for premium users) which allows searching through MS Office documents is awesome. 

 

I would like to know if the Search Grammar will be updated to include searching ONLY through documents?  It would be nice to be able to ignore notes and ONLY search through documents. It would also be great to be able to define the type of office document to search (i.e. doc, xls, ppt, etc). 

 

Current Grammar: http://dev.evernote.com/documentation/cloud/chapters/search_grammar.php

 

I agree the new feature is great - don't think much of an update is required to the search grammar though;  you can already search for different attachment types,  so a search for all spreadsheets and specific words should surely work?

[rimez 12]

The newest feature in EN (for premium users) which allows searching through MS Office documents is awesome. 

 

I would like to know if the Search Grammar will be updated to include searching ONLY through documents?  It would be nice to be able to ignore notes and ONLY search through documents. It would also be great to be able to define the type of office document to search (i.e. doc, xls, ppt, etc). 

 

Current Grammar: http://dev.evernote.com/documentation/cloud/chapters/search_grammar.php

 

I agree the new feature is great - don't think much of an update is required to the search grammar though;  you can already search for different attachment types,  so a search for all spreadsheets and specific words should surely work?

 

Thanks gazumped. Unfortuantely I couldn't figure it out.  Could you possibly give me an example of the grammar to use? For example, search all word documents containing the word "needle".

[gazumped 12,038]

resource:application/msword needle

 

I think..

[jefito 5,598]

@gazumped: that's more or less what I was going to suggest, but I think that the OP doesn't want to find notes where needle is in the note text, but not in the attachment, only notes where "needle" is in the attachment. I don't know how to do that, and I don't think that the grammar allows the distinction.

 

I'm not sure that this rises to the level of something that Evernote will add, but who knows? The current axe that I'm grinding with respect to the search grammar is that there is no way to specify via the grammar operations that affect the note list, but that you can do using the UI. Textbook example: in the Windows UI, you can select "All My Notes", and that shows you your own notes, and none from joined or business notebooks. Useful. But there's no way to specify this in a search, and indeed, if you show "All My Notes" (which filters your note list), and then attempt to create a saved search from that result, you get an empty saved search. The rule before now was that you could always replicate the filter (though not the sorting, another axe) in a saved search. Now you can't.

[gazumped 12,038]

@gazumped: that's more or less what I was going to suggest, but I think that the OP doesn't want to find notes where needle is in the note text, but not in the attachment, only notes where "needle" is in the attachment. I don't know how to do that, and I don't think that the grammar allows the distinction.

 

I'm not sure that this rises to the level of something that Evernote will add, but who knows? The current axe that I'm grinding with respect to the search grammar is that there is no way to specify via the grammar operations that affect the note list, but that you can do using the UI. Textbook example: in the Windows UI, you can select "All My Notes", and that shows you your own notes, and none from joined or business notebooks. Useful. But there's no way to specify this in a search, and indeed, if you show "All My Notes" (which filters your note list), and then attempt to create a saved search from that result, you get an empty saved search. The rule before now was that you could always replicate the filter (though not the sorting, another axe) in a saved search. Now you can't.

 

  - hence the qualification..

 

Depends what the OP wants to achieve;  similar searches on my system kick up a number of hits with the search term in either the note or the attachment.  Haven't tried BitQwik to see if it can do any better - may have a go at that later..

 

Meantime if I was looking for a specific document this would at least be a help,  and my next step (#workaroundalert) would either be to tag the document(s) I needed,  or to tag the ones I didn't for future exclusion.

[jefito 5,598]

Depends what the OP wants to achieve;  similar searches on my system kick up a number of hits with the search term in either the note or the attachment.

Right -- I'd expect that. I read the original request as wanting the search grammar be capable of making the distinction of whether to search only the text or only the attachments. Could be wrong about that, though.

[spg SCOTT 736]

resource:application/msword needle

 

I think..

Resource works by MIME types, so you would have to use those to search.

For whatever reason, word documents are: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document

excel:application/vnd.ms-excel

powerpoint:application/vnd.ms-powerpoint

etc.

And appending needle, would also include ones where it was in the note body, as already mentioned...

[rimez 12]

resource:application/msword needle

 

I think..

 This does allow me to filter for documents with the '.doc' extension only. Not '.docx'.

 

@gazumped: that's more or less what I was going to suggest, but I think that the OP doesn't want to find notes where needle is in the note text, but not in the attachment, only notes where "needle" is in the attachment. I don't know how to do that, and I don't think that the grammar allows the distinction.

 

I'm not sure that this rises to the level of something that Evernote will add, but who knows? The current axe that I'm grinding with respect to the search grammar is that there is no way to specify via the grammar operations that affect the note list, but that you can do using the UI. Textbook example: in the Windows UI, you can select "All My Notes", and that shows you your own notes, and none from joined or business notebooks. Useful. But there's no way to specify this in a search, and indeed, if you show "All My Notes" (which filters your note list), and then attempt to create a saved search from that result, you get an empty saved search. The rule before now was that you could always replicate the filter (though not the sorting, another axe) in a saved search. Now you can't.

 

  - hence the qualification..

 

Depends what the OP wants to achieve;  similar searches on my system kick up a number of hits with the search term in either the note or the attachment.  Haven't tried BitQwik to see if it can do any better - may have a go at that later..

 

Meantime if I was looking for a specific document this would at least be a help,  and my next step (#workaroundalert) would either be to tag the document(s) I needed,  or to tag the ones I didn't for future exclusion.

 

Good idea for tagging the documents but this will not work in my situation... I can't tag (I assume you mean "in" the document). It would be OK for a low volume of docs. 

 

Depends what the OP wants to achieve;  similar searches on my system kick up a number of hits with the search term in either the note or the attachment.

Right -- I'd expect that. I read the original request as wanting the search grammar be capable of making the distinction of whether to search only the text or only the attachments. Could be wrong about that, though.

 

Correct. I do not want to search the note text, only the documents. 

 

resource:application/msword needle

 

I think..

Resource works by MIME types, so you would have to use those to search.

For whatever reason, word documents are: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document

excel:application/vnd.ms-excel

powerpoint:application/vnd.ms-powerpoint

etc.

And appending needle, would also include ones where it was in the note body, as already mentioned...

 

thanks. That works but if I paste the string EN for some reason breaks up the string causing it to search the individual words. After manually keying it into the search box, it worked. 

 

Here are the Office mime types if anyone needs them - I personally think expecting users to know the mime types is VERY counter intuitive. It would be bet if there were search grammar like:

 

document:true doctype:docx AND doctype:doc exclude:notetxt

 

 

 

Ext

MIME Type

.doc

application/msword

.dot

application/msword

.docx

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document

.dotx

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.template

.docm

application/vnd.ms-word.document.macroEnabled.12

.dotm

application/vnd.ms-word.template.macroEnabled.12

.xls

application/vnd.ms-excel

.xlt

application/vnd.ms-excel

.xla

application/vnd.ms-excel

.xlsx

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet

.xltx

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.template

.xlsm

application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.macroEnabled.12

.xltm

application/vnd.ms-excel.template.macroEnabled.12

.xlam

application/vnd.ms-excel.addin.macroEnabled.12

.xlsb

application/vnd.ms-excel.sheet.binary.macroEnabled.12

.ppt

application/vnd.ms-powerpoint

.pot

application/vnd.ms-powerpoint

.pps

application/vnd.ms-powerpoint

.ppa

application/vnd.ms-powerpoint

.pptx

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation

.potx

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.template

.ppsx

application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.slideshow

.ppam

application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.addin.macroEnabled.12

.pptm

application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.presentation.macroEnabled.12

.potm

application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.template.macroEnabled.12

.ppsm

application/vnd.ms-powerpoint.slideshow.macroEnabled.12

[gazumped 12,038]

@rimez - I got the fact that MIME types were required from Evernote's syntax pages so it seems a pretty straightforward step to extrapolate what alternatives might now be required to search for specific documents.  I Googled the list and got something pretty much identical to your last post,  so the list is fairly easy to acquire if you need it.  My point about tagging was aimed at tagging the notes -

 

If you find 100 notes with text in the note and the document,  from which you can sort 20 or so with the text in the note only,  you could choose to tag notes for "valid" and "invalid" with respect to that search.  Save the search and include or exclude the tag as part of that search.

 

You could also save some special character tag in the body of the notes -  "needlesearchvalid" or some such;  or save a special keyword in the documents.

 

Not saying this is right or wrong,  convenient or inconvenient;  this is how stuff works at present.  I still think it's pretty amazing to be able to find text in my Word docs at all - there were, I think some small problems to overcome associated with this.

 

Search will (probably) get better yet - but well done Evernote;  thanks for this one!

[jefito 5,598]

Correct. I do not want to search the note text, only the documents.

As discussed, there is no way to do this currently using the Evernote search grammar as far as I know, if there ever will be.

 

thanks. That works but if I paste the string EN for some reason breaks up the string causing it to search the individual words. After manually keying it into the search box, it worked.

I had no difficulty pasting the string "resource:application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document" (without the double quotes) into the search control. Worked fine.

 

Here are the Office mime types if anyone needs them - I personally think expecting users to know the mime types is VERY counter intuitive. It would be bet if there were search grammar like:

 

document:true doctype:docx AND doctype:doc exclude:notetxt

As you probably already know, there's no "AND" operators in the Evernote search grammar. Remains to be seen whether they ever implement full boolean search, regular expressions or specialized search operators such as you suggest. Or my hobbyhorses, for that matter. MIME types are most likely used because they are standardized, and they they can be applied without needing to specify a file extension. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_media_type (this lists a bunch of MIME types there as well).

[rimez 12]

Thanks everyone for your feedback on this. I am absolutely happy to be able to search through the documents. I just think it wil need to be further enhanced in the future. 

 

I can assure you that since Google Keep is now live, they (Google) will provide the type of search that I describe. Evernote will need to remain competitive -- I'm not saying that I will use Keep (tried it and removed it) only that I can see new users (esp, non paying) prefering something like keep because of the enhanced search features which will likely be free.