Refine search for modified, created or last access date?

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hiccup
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Refine search for modified, created or last access date?

Post by *hiccup »

In the search options, under 'Advanced' you can set parameters for 'Date'.

You can not refine if it should look for modified, created or last accessed dates.
After learning that TC uses 'Everything Search' as the search engine, I looked if that could be changed somehow.
I saw that Everything Search does seem to support refining these different dates:

https://www.voidtools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6191&p=18418&hilit=search+access+date#p18418

My question is, can these extra search features be found, or perhaps activated in TC?


If that's not possible or very complicated, I am wondering about another possible solution:
In the 'Plugins' tab of the search panel you can use the 'tc' plugin, and there you can refine create, write and access dates.

But I fail in finding the correct syntax for entering a value so that it will e.g. find files accessed in the last 30 minutes.


(in case it matters, I have enabled Window writing access dates, so it makes sense to have it for a searchable factor)
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Horst.Epp
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Re: Refine search for modified, created or last access date?

Post by *Horst.Epp »

hiccup wrote:In the search options, under 'Advanced' you can set parameters for 'Date'.

You can not refine if it should look for modified, created or last accessed dates.
After learning that TC uses 'Everything Search' as the search engine, I looked if that could be changed somehow.
I saw that Everything Search does seem to support refining these different dates:

https://www.voidtools.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=6191&p=18418&hilit=search+access+date#p18418

My question is, can these extra search features be found, or perhaps activated in TC?


If that's not possible or very complicated, I am wondering about another possible solution:
In the 'Plugins' tab of the search panel you can use the 'tc' plugin, and there you can refine create, write and access dates.

But I fail in finding the correct syntax for entering a value so that it will e.g. find files accessed in the last 30 minutes.


(in case it matters, I have enabled Window writing access dates, so it makes sense to have it for a searchable factor)
Using the ev: prefix in the TC "Search for" allows the full Everything search syntax.
Windows 11 Home x64 Version 23H2 (OS Build 22631.3374)
TC 11.03 x64 / x86
Everything 1.5.0.1371a (x64), Everything Toolbar 1.3.2, Listary Pro 6.3.0.69
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Re: Refine search for modified, created or last access date?

Post by *Stefan2 »

hiccup wrote:...
After learning that TC uses 'Everything Search' as the search engine,
...
Just a side note for other readers:
TC has his own "search engine", but since v9.0 it is possible to use Everything as a additional, alternative search engine.







 
hiccup
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Post by *hiccup »

Oh, oh, the trials and tribulations of a newbie are not to be laughed at...

So, 'Everything' must first be be added to TC somehow to make use of these features?

I tried to find how to do that, but I failed.

- Should I just download and install 'Everything' as a regular program, and will TC then automatically pick up on that?
- Is there an 'Everything' plugin to be installed? (I couldn't find such though)
- I found some posts on the forum that mentions adding Everything dll's to TC folders. So then nothing would need to be installed?
- And, do changes to TC's ini file have to be made?
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Post by *tuska »

You can use Everything portable.

Download e.g. Everything-1.4.1.895.x64.zip and extract the two files e.g. under
%COMMANDER_PATH%\Tools\Everything\Everything-portabel

In wincmd.ini add the following under [Configuration]:

Code: Select all

Everything=%COMMANDER_PATH%\Tools\Everything\Everything-portabel\Everything.exe -startup
TC-Help wrote:Everything=Everything.exe -startup Set location of Everything.exe to run when user checks "Everything" checkbox while Everything isn't running yet.
Without this option, Everything.exe will be searched in the Total Commander folder. Note: When specifying parameters pointing to a file, like -config,
you need to specify the name including full path. Otherwise Everything will not find the file.
In TC tick 'Everything' here:
- Configuration > Options... > Operation > Calculate space occupied by subdirectories
- Find Files-window (ALT+F7)

Start Everything ... Menu "Tools" - "Options..."
- General: TICK "Start Everything on system startup"
- General: TICK "Everything Service", do NOT TICK: Run as administrator
- Indexes: Database location ... point to this field to see Tooltip-informations (... leave empty ...)

See also: viewtopic.php?p=318142#318142
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Post by *Horst.Epp »

hiccup wrote:Oh, oh, the trials and tribulations of a newbie are not to be laughed at...

So, 'Everything' must first be be added to TC somehow to make use of these features?

I tried to find how to do that, but I failed.

- Should I just download and install 'Everything' as a regular program, and will TC then automatically pick up on that?
- Is there an 'Everything' plugin to be installed? (I couldn't find such though)
- I found some posts on the forum that mentions adding Everything dll's to TC folders. So then nothing would need to be installed?
- And, do changes to TC's ini file have to be made?
Download Everything x64 or x86 from the following:
http://www.voidtools.com/downloads/
Install it (let it install the Everything service, and start with Windows)
Now you can tick the Everything box in TC searches
or use the Everything search syntax using the ev: or ed: prefix
in TCs "Search for" field.
Windows 11 Home x64 Version 23H2 (OS Build 22631.3374)
TC 11.03 x64 / x86
Everything 1.5.0.1371a (x64), Everything Toolbar 1.3.2, Listary Pro 6.3.0.69
QAP 11.6.3.2 x64
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Post by *Dalai »

Uh, Everything is good, I guess, but not all people want the hassle with setting it up etc. TC itself can already search for all given dates: see Search > Plugins tab > plugin "tc" > fields creationdate/-time, writedate/-time and accessdate/-time.

Regards
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Horst.Epp
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Post by *Horst.Epp »

Dalai wrote:Uh, Everything is good, I guess, but not all people want the hassle with setting it up etc. TC itself can already search for all given dates: see Search > Plugins tab > plugin "tc" > fields creationdate/-time, writedate/-time and accessdate/-time.

Regards
Dalai
Not using Everything with TC gives away a much faster search in most cases
and also some functions TC alone can't provide.
Installing Everything is just running the setup.
Windows 11 Home x64 Version 23H2 (OS Build 22631.3374)
TC 11.03 x64 / x86
Everything 1.5.0.1371a (x64), Everything Toolbar 1.3.2, Listary Pro 6.3.0.69
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Post by *hiccup »

I'm running out of superlatives for the support from the forum members here.
Some tech forums are prone to have a bit of a snarky/arrogant atmosphere against the 'not-so-savvy'. It's great to not find that here.
Thanks for that Horst.App, tuska, Stefan2, petermad, Ovg, Dalai, Hacker, HolgerK, Gral, ghisler et al.!


At the moment I think I bit off a bit more than I can chew, so before asking more questions on this matter I'll let all the info and suggestions digest for a while, and see how far I can get.

And, petermad's observation that I am aiming for 'filtering' here is absolutely correct. That's my main aim here.
But it looks like that it doesn't hurt (and it's possibly necessary) to learn and understand TC's 'searching' a bit better also. (coming from FileLocatorPro for that)
So this is all very helpful info.


@Dalai,

Do you mean something like this:
Image: https://i.imgur.com/kzgzJFd.png
should work?

I can't get that to work. It seems erratic though, very rarely the results pane will get populated, but usually not.
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Post by *Dalai »

2hiccup
No, that's not how it works. The mentioned plugins fields expect a proper formatted date or time. So something like "< 3 minutes" won't work. Currently I don't see a way of setting up a search that finds files which have been accessed in the last three minutes with TC alone.

Regards
Dalai
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Post by *tuska »

I played around a litte and found out that the time format should be 00:00:00 (although only 00:00 appears in the file list).
One can get the format in a custom columns view: [=tc.accessdate.D.M.Y h:m:s] (german) OR with Files > Change Attributes...

I also had results on accesstime > 00:03:00 and accesstime < 19:12:53.
A query like "last access date: <3minutes" is also in my opinion - only with TC - not possible.

In TC with Everything: ev:dateaccessed:last3minutes
Directly in Everything: dateaccessed:last3minutes

In Everything: See also Help - Search Syntax ...
datecreated:
datemodified:

In Everything: Tools > Options ... > Indexes:
- Index date accessed
- Index date created
- Index date modified
all ticked and you get the results immediately.
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Post by *petermad »

Install this plugin: https://totalcmd.net/plugring/Age.html (just doubleclick on the downloaded file from TC).

Set it up like this:

http://madsenworld.dk/tcmd/lessthan3hoursaccessed.png

to find files accessed in the last 3 hours.
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Post by *tuska »

2petermad
It is very pleasing that there is such a plugin for TC.
Please do not get me wrong - the following is just a statement.

Especially when searching for the access date, the following can be seen:
Until the search for the access date has been completed with the plugin, the search result is already history.

If the Everything-window is open in the background, then you can already see updates to the completed query in Everything,
while the search is still running with the plugin. Thus, usually the search result between the plugin and everything will differ.

A search with the plugin took me 39 seconds (access date <3 minutes).
There was no delay in Everything, i.e. the final result was immediately apparent.
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Post by *Dalai »

2tuska
Well, that's the nature of the last access timestamp, and your description shows why it's so difficult to do anything useful with it.

Regards
Dalai
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Post by *Hacker »

hiccup,
'm running out of superlatives for the support from the forum members here.
Some tech forums are prone to have a bit of a snarky/arrogant atmosphere against the 'not-so-savvy'. It's great to not find that here.
Thanks for that Horst.App, tuska, Stefan2, petermad, Ovg, Dalai, Hacker, HolgerK, Gral, ghisler et al.!
<3 ;)

Roman
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