[pierre]

Details:

1. I imported some data. There was no option for "index digits", but there should be, according to this forum. So I suppose the program indexes digits now in any case, is this right?

2. With Quick Search, I can find words or keywords, with these special characters: £, ¦, °, §, ¬, ¢, € (in "Search for", I enter £*, without quotes), but I cannot find words or automatic keywords with _, $, @, #, |, [, ], {, }. Is this correct? (Here and below, the checkboxes at the bottom of the screen are all unchecked, except for the second one, "Match whole words", which is checked but greyed out, so cannot be unchecked.)

3. Do you know of other special characters that could be found, or do I have to try them all, one by one?

4. The above is Quick Search only. So I also tried with Advanced Search, which has the same "Search for" entry field. So I try the unsuccessful characters above again, enclosing them with double quotes, in that "Search for" field: "_" or "_*", but this gives no result, when it should.

5. So I do again Advanced Search, now trying to use the fields "Item/Attribute", "Not", "Comparison" and "Value": In "Item/Attribute", I enter "(Item)" or "Item Text": I don't know which one is right here?

6. In field "Comparison", I enter "matches wildcard" instead of "contain keywords", in field "value" I enter _ or "_" (with or without quotes, I don't know which one is correct?)

7. As before, but in "value", I enter _* or "_*" (with or without quotes, I don't know which one is correct?)

8. All these do not give any result (0 matching items), when there should be results. So I also try to enter _ or _* or "_" or "_*" into the "Search for" field, meaning that here, I do it both ways at the same time, the search term is in the "Search for" field, and again in the "Value" field: Is this correct proceeding? But no results.

9. In "Tools-Compact and Repair" the option "Enable enhanced full-text search features" is checked, and I do "Compact/Repair database" (both) for rebuilding the index, but this doesn't make any difference, there is no matching item.

10. From help and forum, I had understood that special characters could be searched by "matches wildcard" search if not by "contains keywords" search, so how can I search for such characters? Somebody in the forum said wildcard search is "brute force", will find anything but will be slow. So it seems this search is good enough for this initial search, in order to replace problem characters with characters that can be included in keywords.

11. Is there any option or editable table or editable list in which I can include special characters into those special characters that are found, by keywords search or at least by wildcard search? As said, european currency symbols like pound and euro can be included in keywords, and the dollar sign can not, and will not even be found be wildcard search, or the ¦ sign can be included even in a keyword, when the | sign cannot even be found by wildcard search.

12. I need this search for non-keyword special characters since I want to change them to keyword-searchable characters (from | to ¦ for example), by first searching for |, have the matching items in the "Search Results", and then do a manual "Replace" for any such item in the "Search Results", one by one, which is necessary because there is no global replace. The idea behind is, there are 200 items, but perhaps only 10 items containing the | sign, and so it would be helpful to have only 10 items to process manually, instead of 200, especially since I have to do this with many special characters, one by one.

13. I would not like to do special keywords with special characters, manually, one by one for every item, but I would like to use automatically generated keywords only but containing some special characters (¦ instead of the impossible (?) |, for example, or £ instead of $).

14. Since the help "Phrase Search" brings the subjects "Extended Phrase Search (less efficient but comprehensive):" not independently, but under the heading "Full-Text Search Enhancements Disabled", I unchecked these search enhancements and rebuilt the index, then tried again.

15. Here, the "Match whole words" option is not greyed out anymore, and I try with this option checked or unchecked: Especially unchecked, this should bring some results, but it doesn't.

16. As above, I do not find any of these special characters. I leave the "Search for" field alone since I go strictly by the help file in "Extended Phrase Search (less efficient but comprehensive):", and in the first and only search line, I do, as stated in the help file, "Item Text", then "matches wildcard", then the special character, "#" for example, with or without quotes, and with or without a "*", so I have 4 alternatives, #, #*, "#" and "#*" - with the option under 14. checked or unchecked, this makes 8 alternatives. None of them finds the special character in question, and I tried with several of them, all from the "cannot find" group above.

17. I have seen I could perhaps change such characters automatically, with SQLite, but since you say it could corrupt my file, I prefer to search in Ultra Recall (but how?), then do the replace for each concerned item, one by one, because overall, this would be less work to do than to compare the whole file after processing it with SQLite.

18. I should have done all this before importing my material into Ultra Recall, but wasn't aware it hasn't global replace, and wasn't aware it had problems with special characters, so I now have to do the necessary changes within Ultra Recall, or I lose the changes I have made here before becoming aware of the problem.