Document is not found after a search

Last Reviewed: February 16, 2009

Article: DTS0113

Applies to: dtSearch Desktop (all versions)

Symptoms

Search fails to retrieve a file that should be found

Possible Causes

- A search setting is excluding the file

- The file was not indexed

- The file does not contain the text you are searching for

Troubleshooting Steps

1.  Check the search criteria.  
In the Search dialog box, check the bottom of the dialog box for filename or other criteria, possibly left from a previous search, that could be excluding the file you are searching for.

2. Check that the file contains the word you are searching for.
In dtSearch, click File > View File to open the document.  Some files contain images of words rather than the words themselves. For example, a PDF file may contain an image of a scanned page but no text.  Similarly, an HTML file may display text in a banner image.  For information on how to convert images into searchable text, see "How to use dtSearch or dtSearch Web with OCR"

3. Check that the file was indexed.

- Try searching for another word that you know is in the file.

- Click Index > Index Manager and check the folders and filename filters for the index, and also make sure the number of documents in the index is not 0 (zero).

     Zero documents means that dtSearch did not find any indexable documents in the path indicated in the What to index box in the Update Index dialog box (Index > Update Index).   In this case, (1) click "Clear list" to remove any items in the What to index box, (2) Click Add Folder or Add File to add the correct path to your documents, and (3) Click Start Indexing.  If your documents are located on a network share, use a UNC path instead of a mapped drive to ensure that access to the documents will be consistent for different users.  To index documents using UNC paths rather than mapped letter drives, select folders under Network Neighborhood in the Add Folder dialog box.  You can also convert a folder in the What to index list to UNC format.  To convert a folder name to UNC format, right-click the folder name you want to convert and choose Make UNC from the menu that pops up.  If you receive an access-related error message while attempting to access the network drive or add the documents, ask your network administrator to check your network connection and user access rights to the network share.