FoxTrot Personal Search 4.0b5 for Mac User Reviews
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"One of the best software investments I've made!"
Version: FoxTrot Personal Search 4.0b7
Pros
At work, it has signified for me much less stress to find that letter, that PDF, that report, that email where the information I urgently needed was—having very often someone at the other side of the phone waiting for it. I also use it at home to find that citation I needed among my research papers or OCR scanned documents.
I used to have other database applications, more tag orientend, but having to deal with Gigabites of texts, it simply was not the best approach. Now, although I still classify my info in mayor cathegories, I don't spend more time in tagging files, trying to guess when will I need to find them in order to arrange them accordingly. With FoxTrot I can find the context in the document I'm looking for, and not just the file to search in it. And the time scroll also lets me narrow the results, in real time.
I also use Yojimbo very much, and it was a so nice surprise to find out that FoxTrot even searches the Yojimbo database without necessarily having it running.Cons
None. I wish I had known it years ago.
Summary
I recently have purchased a license of FoxTrot Professional and it's really one of the best software investments I've made.
A computer is as powerful as the programms you run in it, and FoxTrot has really empowered me to instantly find the right information. It's excellent! -
"Do you want to save hours and hours of your time?"
Version: FoxTrot Personal Search 2.6
Pros
Very easy to use and quite fast scanning. It is waaaaaaaay better than using Google desktop search on my old windows system. Apple should buy the makers of FoxTrot!
Cons
As long as you have a good processor and enough memory, you shouldn't have any problems.
Summary
I'm a management consultant and spend about half my time in my home office. I used to spend hours and hours looking for a file that I swear that I had on one of my drives, but just could not locate. FoxTrot Personal Search has saved me countless hours of frustration. I strongly recommend this to anyone who is tired of misplacing files and then having that bad feeling when you can't find it.
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"Saved the day..."
Version: FoxTrot Personal Search 2.5.3
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
This app is awesome. I was on deadline to submit a grant proposal and couldn't for the life of me find a document containing pertinent information. Fortunately for me, I had a trial version of FoxTrot Personal Search (FPS) still active, so I fired it up. Upon first starting the app you are given a choice which folder on your hard drive you want to index. The index building process takes several minutes depending on the number of records it has to process. The index created makes for very fast searches using key word(s). The FPS uses normal boolean logic and wildcards. Well, when I typed in the search box the phrase "united way" that I so desperately needed to find, bam, a list of records (rtf, doc, pdf, etc.) popped up with all occurrences found in the folder selected to index. A separate viewer below this list shows a preview of the record with the phrase "united way" in bold and highlighted. There's also another window on the side that allows you to further drill down. For example, there's a section with a slider you use to narrow the date range to search. A second section shows the location(s) where the records were found (folders and subfolders on your hard drive) and the number of items found containing the key word(s) or phrase. You can also see in a third section the file type found (e.g., pdf, word processor, plain text, mail message, etc.) with the total number found. Within a few seconds I found the phrase I was looking for in a mail message from a colleague. That made my day and allowed me to complete the proposal on time. I immediately and gladly bought a license. There's more power under the hood (in Preferences) where you can add additional folders to include in the index (like User/Library/Mail for email searches), but it's not a good idea to index the entire hard drive because that will increase the size of the index file and slow down searches. Moreover, you can exclude certain folders (like a Backup folder) which will reduce redundancy and speed up the search function. I'm thrilled and highly recommend FPS if you have thousands of documents and/or email messages you need to regularly search for arcane data that you couldn't possibly keep straight in your head. -
"Excellent!"
Version: FoxTrot Personal Search 2.0.2
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Finally a local search tool that can wade through thousands of documents and provide accurate results with live previews. Even hyperlinks are maintained in HTML docs.
Amazingly fast indexing and tons of search features. A little pricey but it is one-of-a-kind. -
"Warning re Entourage Email"
Version: FoxTrot Personal Search 1.5
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
This product has the speed and control I've been looking for, but, contrary to the advertising, would not find Entourage email documents. Spent hours indexing and reindexing, to no avail; finally, someone suggested that you had to index the metadata in the user/library/caches/metadata/microsoft folder. That worked for while, but lately the product has stopped finding Entourage docs. Too bad - would like to buy the product otherwise and if it worked would be worth the price to me. There is almost no documentation; help file not available (though on the menu). -
"Just Great!"
Version: FoxTrot Personal Search 1.5
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Excellent! Use it all the time! I find spotlight useless for everyday work. -
"Fantastic = Wow!"
Version: FoxTrot Personal Search 1.5
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
This is a must have for me. It is simply awesome! Type a few words and it finds and shows you the location in the files. Wow! Got love it. Thank you thank you thank you.
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"Just gets better and better"
Version: FoxTrot Personal Search 1.5
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
I have a variety of indexing and searching tools: Spotlight, PathFinder, EagleFiler. Foxtrot is just head and shoulders ahead of everything else in capability. It finds every instance of a search term within a document and highlights them and allows you to jump from instance to instance and even gives a popup menu that shows all the instances in a short context.
It is wonderful to have my Entourage emails listed by subject line rather than a cryptic file name. I wrote an earlier review but the product has improved so much in capability and reliability that it deserves a new review. -
"Nice product - some problems"
Version: FoxTrot Personal Search 1.1
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Unique interface presents search results in context. However, search engine seems to only search first part of .doc files, leaving large portions of documents un-indexed. Repeated requests to developers for assistance or explanation have gone unanswered. -
"GREAT!"
Version: FoxTrot Personal Search 1.0.9
Summary
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.
Incredibly powerful and useful. If you're thinking "Yeah, I have Spotlight, and it was free" then think again. FoxTrot is instantaneous. It lets you do those good boolean searches that Spotlight makes impossible to do (or to remember how to do). I can't believe how fast it finds Mail messages, and then shows me the subject line, mailbox location, and the full text of the message in preview.
One drawback -- it doesn't automatically keep the index up to date. Hope that gets added soon!
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