Finally able to find stories on my computer
Generally I save all the stories I read on the internet, 'cause I never know if and when the stories may be deleted or otherwise disappear from the internet.
But I have to admit I am sometimes (read mostly) way too lazy to sort these stories. It might happen that I collect stories from different fandoms over months. And in the end I am not able to find anything anymore.
Until now...
I tried looking for a solution, anything I could do to help me find stories easily again. Sorting them would be a first (and good) step, but then I would still have hundreds of stories of a single fandom and still would not be able to find a story again as long as I do not know the name (as I posted a few days ago with a ST TOS story).
I found the general solution being a desktop search software. This is a search engine which is able to search the content of text files (like html, as all my saved stories are) for keywords after the software indexed these text files.
I found one free software and tried it. It was an absolute success.
The software I found is called Copernic Desktop Search and there is a free Home Edition avaible.
I collected all my stories (sorted & unsorted) in a single folder (and some subfolders) and told CDS to just index this folder (don't need my whole computer right now, which would probably take several hours).
This folder by the way contains over 4.000 stories. Now imagine you have to find one story in that - even if you have already sorted all the stories into categories. It would take ages.
With CDS it took a few minutes.
Of course you have to know special keywords that are not overly common in your stories in that combination, otherwise you get way too many results. Thankfully I remembered the story quite well and could think about a few words which may appear in that story and which are not very often used (at least not in that combination).
At first I tried it with 3 words and got 411 results; another word reduced the results to 200 and a fifth word gave me 99 results (you get results after a few seconds btw).
Then I tried these first and the story I was looking for was really among them (I saved that one in August 2010, no wonder I could not really recall the name or place I might have saved it).
Since then I found five other stories I was looking for in a matter of minutes, which otherwise would have taken hours/days to find.
I may not be able to find every story, I need to experiment with different keywords which may appear in a story and there are still a lot of results I have to look through.
But it still gives me a chance to find the one or the other story and I am absolutely thrilled about this. :)
So if anyone here has the same problem I can only recommend the software.
By the way, it is also able to search contacts, favourites (IE & Firefox), videos, pictures and a lot of formats of all categories. ;)
Now if you'll excuse me, there is a certain story I am looking for...
But I have to admit I am sometimes (read mostly) way too lazy to sort these stories. It might happen that I collect stories from different fandoms over months. And in the end I am not able to find anything anymore.
Until now...
I tried looking for a solution, anything I could do to help me find stories easily again. Sorting them would be a first (and good) step, but then I would still have hundreds of stories of a single fandom and still would not be able to find a story again as long as I do not know the name (as I posted a few days ago with a ST TOS story).
I found the general solution being a desktop search software. This is a search engine which is able to search the content of text files (like html, as all my saved stories are) for keywords after the software indexed these text files.
I found one free software and tried it. It was an absolute success.
The software I found is called Copernic Desktop Search and there is a free Home Edition avaible.
I collected all my stories (sorted & unsorted) in a single folder (and some subfolders) and told CDS to just index this folder (don't need my whole computer right now, which would probably take several hours).
This folder by the way contains over 4.000 stories. Now imagine you have to find one story in that - even if you have already sorted all the stories into categories. It would take ages.
With CDS it took a few minutes.
Of course you have to know special keywords that are not overly common in your stories in that combination, otherwise you get way too many results. Thankfully I remembered the story quite well and could think about a few words which may appear in that story and which are not very often used (at least not in that combination).
At first I tried it with 3 words and got 411 results; another word reduced the results to 200 and a fifth word gave me 99 results (you get results after a few seconds btw).
Then I tried these first and the story I was looking for was really among them (I saved that one in August 2010, no wonder I could not really recall the name or place I might have saved it).
Since then I found five other stories I was looking for in a matter of minutes, which otherwise would have taken hours/days to find.
I may not be able to find every story, I need to experiment with different keywords which may appear in a story and there are still a lot of results I have to look through.
But it still gives me a chance to find the one or the other story and I am absolutely thrilled about this. :)
So if anyone here has the same problem I can only recommend the software.
By the way, it is also able to search contacts, favourites (IE & Firefox), videos, pictures and a lot of formats of all categories. ;)
Now if you'll excuse me, there is a certain story I am looking for...