Chapter 3. Search

Table of Contents
3.1. Simple search
3.2. Complex/advanced search
3.3. Multiple databases
3.4. Document history
3.5. Result list sorting
3.6. Additional result list functionality
3.7. Search tips, shortcuts
3.8. Customising the search interface

The recoll program provides the user interface for searching. It is based on the QT library.

3.1. Simple search

  1. Start the recoll program.

  2. Possibly choose a search mode: Any term or All terms or File name.

  3. Enter search term(s) in the text field at the top of the window.

  4. Click the Search button or hit the Enter key to start the search.

The initial default search mode is Any term. This will look for documents with any of the search terms (the ones with more terms will get better scores). All terms will ensure that only documents with all the terms will be returned. File name will specifically look for file names, and allows using wildcards (*, ? , []).

Recoll remembers the last few searches that you performed. You can use the simple search text entry widget (a combobox) to recall them (click on the thing at the right of the text field). Please note, however, that only the search texts are remembered, not the mode (all/any/filename).

You can use the Tools / Advanced search dialog for more complex searches.

After starting a search, a list of results will instantly be displayed in the main list window. Clicking on the Preview link for an entry will open an internal preview window for the document. Clicking the Edit link will attempt to start an external viewer (have a look at the mimeconf configuration file to see how these are configured).

By default, the document list is presented in order of relevance (how well the system estimates that the document matches the query). You can specify a different ordering by using the Tools / Sort parameters dialog.

The Preview and Edit edit links may not be present for all entries, meaning that Recoll has no configured way to preview a given file type (which was indexed by name only), or no configured external viewer for the file type. This can sometimes be adjusted simply by tweaking the mimemap and mimeconf configuration files.

You can click on the Query details link at the top of the results page to see the query actually performed, after stem expansion and other processing.