Can I search inside my favorites?
Yes, you can filter the favorites by keywords. As you add favorites to your main menu and your submenus, it can become tricky to find the favorite you want to edit. In addition to easing favorites edition, this tool also gives you a global view of your favorites, allowing to eliminate unwanted duplicates or to better organize your menu.
Using the Search tool
First, to reveal the Search box, click the Magnifier icon, select the menu Tools, Search for favorites or hit Ctrl-F.
To filter you favorites, simply type a few characters in the Search box just above the favorite list. To restore the full list, simply click the X button on the right.
By default, only the favorites with the searched string in their name will appear in the filtered list. But you can select the check box Extended Search to extend the search to more favorites properties: favorite submenu, type, shortcut, hotstring trigger, location (file or folder path), snippet content, FTP login name and password, and advanced settings Parameters and Start in folder.
You can now search one or more sequence of characters. For example, searching “qui” list find items with this sequence of characters in their name (or other properties). You could also search “qui pop” to find items containing both “qui” AND “pop”.
On the left column, the Sort button sorts the search result by any column, ascending or descending if you select again the current sort column. You can also sort using the context menu that you open by right-clicking inside the list.
Just above, the View button (eye icon) shows a popup menu with the items currently in the search result (see an example, below). This allows you to review the content of these favorites in addition to editing them. If multiple search result items have the same name, the [!] suffix is used to differentiate them. More info: What is the “eye” icon on the left side of the Customize window?.
And above again is the Open the submenu button that opens the submenu containing the item currently selected in the search result.
With the Tools menu, you can open the Search box and select the Extended Search option. In addition, the Special Searches menu offer very powerful search results. See: What are the Special Searches?
Editing favorites from the search result
To edit your favorites, select one or multiple items in the list (using Click, Shift+Click or Ctrl+Click) and hit one of the buttons in the right column.
- Edit: edit the selected favorite or submenu (you can also double-click to edit an item).
- Remove: remove one or multiple favorites or submenus (and all the submenus content).
- Copy: copy one or multiple favorites, or copy one submenu and its content (submenus, groups and shared menus can only be copied or moved individually).
- Move: move one or multiple favorites, or move one submenu and its content.
- Add: close the search result and add a new favorite.
Search options
Various options under the Customize Windows section of the Options dialog box will affect hot the Search tool works.
- Search scope: by default, the search result includes all menu items, from the Main menu down to the last submenus but you can select the second radio button to search only in the menu (or group) currently displayed in the Customize window and its submenu.
- Search result with edit dates and stats columns: by default, only the Name, Menu, Type, Hotkey (or Hotstring) and Location or content columns are displayed in search results but enabling this options allows to add the Last Modified, Created and Last Used dates and the Usage columns are added. See an example below.The Usage column is shown only if the QAP database is enabled in the Database section of the Options dialog box. It displays the number of times an item was launched using the QAP menu or appeared in the Windows Recent Items special folder during the period covered by the database (see: How can I control how the Frequent Items database works?).
- Search with language settings: by default, the search filter uses the Windows locale language settings (aka regional settings) when handling accentuated characters (for example, searching for “école” and “ecole” will return the same result) but, by disabling this option, accentuated letters will be treated as specific characters.
The following screen capture shows an example of the search result with additional columns.
A few notes, for those who want to know everything:
- filtering is case insensitive;
- filtered favorites are displayed in the order they were found, starting from the current menu;
- changing menu using the dropdown list or the navigation arrows restore the regular unfiltered list;
- the back and forward arrows allows to return to the previously closed search results as well as to previously opened submenus.
