Retrieve It! quickly and easily finds text anywhere on your Macintosh system. Retrieve It! can search file names (extremely fast!) and it can search the contents of files as well.
Retrieve It! will save you time, because it allows you to find, view, and copy information fast, without opening several documents or applications. And Retrieve It! was designed from the start to be easy to use.
About This On-line Help
This On-line help is a subset of the printed Retrieve It! User’s Guide. See the Retrieve It! User’s Guide for installation instructions and Limitations on Warranty and Liability.
To quickly find a topic, type a word or partial word related to the topic into the box next to “Find” above, and select the Find button. If you type several words separated by the word “or” -- e.g. “view or open or peek” -- and select Find, Retrieve It! will find the next occurrence of any of the words.
Chapter 1: Installing Retrieve It!
To install Retrieve It!, insert the Retrieve It! installation disk and double click on the “Installer” icon. Please see the printed Retrieve It! User’s Guide for more detailed instructions on installing Retrieve It!.
Chapter 2: A Few Quick Examples
This chapter illustrates how you can use Retrieve It! to find files whose names or contents contain any part of a word or phrase. Later chapters give details on each of Retrieve It!'s features.
Example 1: Finding files whose names contain a given word
1. Select “Retrieve It!” from the Apple menu to start Retrieve It!. The Retrieve It! main window will appear on your screen.
2. Type a word and click the Start button. When you start the search Retrieve It! will find and list each file on your hard drive whose name contains the word. Retrieve It! will bark when it's done. If no matching files were found, try searching for a different word.
When a search is in progress, the “Start” button changes to a “Pause” button. As the name implies, you can pause the search by clicking that button. Note, a double border around a button (e.g. the Start button) means you can select it by typing the <return> or <enter> key on your keyboard, as well as by clicking on the button.
3. Select a file name from the list of found files. (You can do this even while the search proceeds.) When you select a file Retrieve It! shows you information about the file, such as when it was created and last modified, its size, and where it resides. You can view the contents of a selected file using the Peek or Open commands. These are discussed in Chapter 5.
Example 2: Finding files whose contents contain a given word
1. Click on the popup menu next to “in:” on the main Retrieve It! screen, and choose “Data” from that menu. (If a previous search was in progress, Retrieve It! will ask if it's ok to stop that search and clear any information found during it. Respond by clicking the OK button.)
2. Type a part of a word or phrase and click the Start button. Retrieve It! will search the content of all files in the volume or folder shown next to "Search:" at the top of the screen. Each file that contains the text you typed will be listed.
Searching the content of every file on a large hard drive can take a few minutes. To speed things up, you can just search a folder, rather than the whole volume, by selecting "a folder…" from the "Search:" popup menu. You can also restrict the search to files of a certain kind (e.g. Microsoft Word files) or files that were recently modified. You do this with the options in the popup menus next to “of:” and “modified:” on the Retrieve It! screen. These and other search options that speed the search are discussed more in Chapter 3.
Example 3: Searching for combinations of words
1. Pause the current search if it's in progress, and type two words separated by the word AND. For example, you could type: Jack AND Jill.
2. Start the search. (If Retrieve It! asks whether it's ok to clear the current search, click OK.) Retrieve It! will list all files containing both the word "Jack" and the word "Jill".
To find files that contain the phrase "Jack and Jill", as opposed to just the two separate words "Jill" and "Jack", you must surround the phrase with quotation marks. That is, type: "Jack and Jill".
The word AND in the first example is called a search operator. (We show it in all caps here, but the case doesn't matter to Retrieve It!.) Retrieve It! has many other search operators, like OR (for finding files containing either one word or another) and MORETHAN (for finding files containing more than a certain number of occurrences of a word).
You can see a list of search operators by choosing “Show Operator Names” from the Retrieve It! menu. Click on an operator name in the list to see an example of how to use the selected operator. Search operators and the Operator Names list are described in more detail in Chapter 4.
Chapter 3: Using Retrieve It! to Find Files
This Chapter explains how to use Retrieve It! and all of its search options to quickly find information anywhere on your Macintosh.
Starting Retrieve It!
When you select Retrieve It! from the Apple Menu, the Retrieve It! screen appears.
Each box with a little black triangle is a popup menu. When you click and hold the mouse button on a popup menu, a menu of options appears, allowing you to choose one of the options.
Choosing where to search
Use the pop-up menu next to the word “Search:” to tell Retrieve It! what volume or folder you want to search. Hard disks, floppies, and file servers are examples of volumes.
If you have more than one volume, you can choose “all volumes” to search all of them.
When you're searching the content of files (as discussed below), you'll often want to limit the search to a specific folder, rather than searching an entire hard drive. Choosing “a folder…” from the “Search:” pop-up menu brings up a screen similar to the window you see when saving a file in most Macintosh applications. Use it to indicate which folder you want to search.
Entering what to search for
In the box next to “for:”, type the sequence of letters, numbers or words that you want Retrieve It! to find. When you start the search (as discussed below), Retrieve It! will list all files containing the text indicated in the box. You can use search operators to find combinations of words, like "apple" and "orange" but not "banana". Search operators are discussed in Chapter 4. You can also use quotation marks and parenthesis. These are discussed at the end of Chapter 4.
Specifying what part of the files to search
Retrieve It! lets you search for information inside of files as well as in their names. Use the popup menu next to “in:” to select which part of files to search: name, data or resources. Most word processors store text in a part of files called the “data”. Some Macintosh applications store some information, for example fonts,in another part of files called “resources”. (Most users will have no need to search resources.)
Choosing the kind of files to search
Use the popup menu next to “of:” to indicate the kind of files you want Retrieve It! to search. The default selection is “all files and folders”, however you can speed up your search by narrowing it down to files created by a specific application. Choose “other...” to see a list of all the kinds of files that are known to your system. (After you choose one, it will be added to the popup menu, so you won't have to choose “other...” the next time you want to search for that kind of file. The popup menu lists up to the last five selected application names.)
Choosing the age of files to search
Use the popup menu next to “modified:” to indicate the age of the files you would like Retrieve It to search. For example, you may only want to search files modified in the last week. Such a search would be faster than a search of all files.
Choosing “Case must match” or “Ignore case”
Retrieve It! lets you decide if case is significant during the search. For example, if “Case must match” is selected, a search for "Mookie" would not match "mookie" because the upper case "M" does not match the lower case "m". The two words do match when “Ignore case” is selected.
Starting and stopping the search
Click the “Start” button to start the search. (Note: The double border around the Start button indicates that you can also select the button by typing the <return> or <enter> key on the keyboard.) When the search is in progress, the button name will change to “Pause”. Select the Pause button to pause the search. The button will change back to “Start”, and you can resume the search by selecting it again. Found files are listed on the main Retrieve It! screen.
Listing found files
You can change the order in which found files are listed by clicking on the “Name', “Kind”, or “Last Modified” column headings. Selecting “Name” will sort files alphabetically by name. Clicking on “Kind” will sort the files by kind. Clicking on “Last Modified” will sort the files by the date they were last modified. The name of the last selected column header is underlined. You can also use the “List by Name”, “List by Kind”, “List by Date”, and “List by Order Found” commands in the Retrieve It! menu to change the list order.
Seeing file information
When you click on a file in the list of found files Retrieve It! displays information about the file (as shown above) including the file's creation date, last modification date, and size, as well as the part of the file in which the search was satisfied (e.g. name, data, and/or resources), and the folders in which the file resides. You can see information about the next or previous file in the list by typing the down or up arrow key on the keyboard.
Viewing a found file
To view the content of a found file select its name from the list of found files, then click on the Peek button.(You can also double click on the file’s name in the list.) A new window, called the “Peek Window” will open.
Use this window to view the file, scroll through it, find words in it, and select and copy portions of it (using the Copy command under the Edit menu). You can paste copied text into other documents. (The “Peek In Any File…” command in the Retrieve It! menu allows you to view any file, whether or not the file has been found by a Retrieve It! search.) Chapter 5 explains the Peek window in more detail.
Opening a found file
The view you get of a file in the Peek window will often not precisely represent how the file looks when opened in the application that created it. For example, the Peek window doesn't interpret graphics in an illustration document or formatting characters in a word processor document. To see the document as it was created, you'll want to open it in the application that was used to created it. You can do this quickly by selecting the file’s name from the list of found files and then selecting the Open button. (The Open button will only be enabled if the application that was used to create the selected file can be found on your system.)
For example, if a MacWrite document is found and you have the MacWrite application, selecting “Open” will start the MacWrite application and tell it to open the found document. If an application is listed, you can select it an open it using the Open command. This is often called “launching” an application.
Chapter 4: Using Search Operators to Find Combinations of Words
You can find files containing specific combinations of words using Retrieve It!'s search operators. For example, to find files containing both the word "apple" and the word "orange", use the search operator AND. Type "apple and orange" into the box next to “for:”. (We'll call this the "search string" box.)
When you start the search, Retrieve It! will list all files containing both the word "apple" and the word "orange". (Note: The case of search operators is ignored. You can type "AND" or "and".)
Retrieve It! has many other search operators, like OR (for finding files containing either one word or another) and MORETHAN (for finding files containing more than a certain number of occurrences of a word). Each of Retrieve It!'s search operators is discussed later in this chapter.
First, however, we explain how you can see a list of Retrieve It!'s search operators, and how, by clicking on an operator name in the list, you can see an example of how to use that operator. We also give a couple of examples illustrating how you can use parenthesis and quotation marks.
Seeing a list of Search Operators
Choose “Show Operator Names” from the Retrieve It! menu to see a list of all of Retrieve It!'s search operators. The operator list appears to the right of the search string box.
Seeing examples of how to use search operators
Click on an operator name in the list to see an example of how to use that search operator. If you double click on an operator name, that name will be typed into the search string box (the one next to “for:”) at the current selection point.
Using Parenthesis and Quotation Marks
If you type a search string containing more than one search operator, Retrieve It! will insert quotation marks and parenthesis where it thinks they should be. For example, if you type:
crown or Jack and Jill
and then start the search, Retrieve It! will rewrite the search string as:
(“CROWN” OR “JACK”) AND “JILL”
This would find files containing either "Crown" or "Jack", and containing "Jill".
You can put your own parenthesis in if you want the terms grouped differently. For example, you might retype the above search string as:
“CROWN” OR (“JACK” AND “JILL”)
This would find all files containing "crown", or containing both "Jack" and "Jill".
Similarly, you can put in your own quotation marks. For example, if you're interested in files that contain the phrase "Jack and Jill", as opposed to merely the word "Jack" and the word "Jill", you could retype the above search string as:
“CROWN” OR “JACK AND JILL”
The Search Operators
The following examples illustrate how to use each Retrieve It! search operator. We show the operators in capital letters here, but operator case does not matter to Retrieve It!.
ALL
Searching for:
ALL
lists all files.
AND
Searching for
"Busi" AND "cards"
lists files containing both the partial word "Busi" and the word "cards".
BUT
Searching for
"Busi" BUT NOT "cards"
lists files containing the partial word "Busi" but not the word "cards". The NOT operator is discussed below.
OR
Searching for
"Matt" OR "Kim"
lists files containing either "Matt" or "Kim".
NOT
Searching for
NOT "peach"
lists files that do not contain the word "peach". This is most often used in conjunction with another operator like AND or BUT. See the example for the BUT operator above.
Note, you can use the search operators discussed so far, but not the ones discussed below, to combine other search phrases. For example,
("cat" AND "mouse") OR ("cheese" NEAR "cheddar")
is an acceptable search phrase. The OR operator is used to combine the two smaller phrases to the left and right of "OR". However the following search string is not accepted by Retrieve It!:
("cat" AND "mouse") AFTER ("cheese" NEAR "cheddar")
because the AFTER search operator, and the others discussed below, cannot be used to combine other search phrases. They can only be surrounded by simple text, as in the following examples.
AFTER
Searching for
"bone" AFTER "dog"
lists files in which "bone" occurs after "dog".
BEFORE
Searching for
"bone" BEFORE"dog"
lists files in which "bone" occurs before "dog".
WITHIN number
Searching for
"Berk" WITHIN 50 "University"
lists files in which "Berk" occurs within 50 characters of "University".
NEAR
Searching for
"Berk" NEAR "University"
lists files in which "Berk" occurs within 25 characters of "University". The NEAR search operator is simply shorthand for WITHIN 25.
WITHINBEFORE number
Searching for
"dog" WITHINBEFORE 30 "bone"
lists files in which "dog" occurs before "bone" and within 30 characters of it.
WITHINAFTER number
Searching for
"dog" WITHINAFTER 100 "bone"
lists files in which "dog" occurs after "bone" and within 100 characters of it.
MORETHAN number
Searching for
MORETHAN 4 "apple"
lists files in which "apple" occurs more than four times.
(...)
Parenthesis were discussed earlier in this chapter in the section titled "Using Parenthesis and Quotation Marks". Searching for
"apple" or ("oranges" and "bananas")
lists files in which "apple" occurs, or in which both "oranges" and "bananas" occur. If you double click on the parenthesis in the operator list, Retrieve It! will put parenthesis around whatever is selected in the current search string.
"..."
You can use quotation marks around any sequence of characters for which you might search, including a phrase. For example, searching for
"to be or not to be"
lists files containing the phrase "to be or not to be".
If you did not use quotation marks around a phrase like "Jack and Jill" then Retrieve It! would interpret the word "and" as a search operator. That is, it would search for
"Jack" and "Jill"
which would list files containing both the word "Jack" and the word "Jill", not necessarily near one another. In general, you must use quotation marks to search for phrases that contain words that Retrieve It! uses for its search operators. You do not have to use quotation marks for phrases like "once upon a time" which don't contain any search operator names.
If you double click on the quotation marks in the operator list, Retrieve It! will put quotation marks around whatever is selected in the current search string.
Chapter 5: Viewing Files
There are two commands for viewing the content of a file that Retrieve It! has found: Peek and Open.
The Peek Command
To Peek at a file, select its name from the list of found files and click the Peek button. (You can do this while a search is still in progress.) A new window displaying the file’s content, called the “Peek Window”, will appear. You can view several files at once, each in its own Peek Window. You can use the Peek Window to view the file, scroll through it, find words in it, and select and copy portions of it for pasting into other documents.
This chapter discusses everything you can do with the Peek Window below. First we describe the other way to view files.
The Open Command
The view you get of a file in the Peek window will often not precisely represent how the file looks when opened in the application that created it. For example, the Peek window doesn't interpret graphics in an illustration document or formatting characters in a word processor document. To see the document as it was created, you'll want to open it in the application that was used to created it. You can do this quickly using Retrieve It!'s Open command.
To open a found file into the application that created it, select the file’s name and select the “Open” button. (You can do this while a search is still in progress.) For example, if a MacWrite document is found and selected, and your system contains the MacWrite application, then the Open command will be enabled. Choosing “Open” will start the MacWrite application and tell it to open the selected document.
If an application, rather than a document, is found and selected, choosing the Open command will start the application. This can be a very quick way to find and start an application. (The Open button will not be enabled if you're running System 6 without MultiFinder and another application is already open, or if the application to be opened isn't on your system.)
As discussed in Chapter 6, you can also use the keyboard to invoke the Open command and many other Retrieve It! commands. The Open command has a keyboard equivalent of command-O. (The command key is to the left of the space bar.)
The Peek Window
As mentioned above, you can view the content of a file by selecting the file's name from the list of found files and clicking the Peek button. (You can also choose the Peek menu command, which has a keyboard equivalent of command-P. Keyboard equivalents are discussed in Chapter 6.) This brings up the Peek Window, which display the file's content.
To view a file that isn't listed on Retrieve It!'s main screen, use the “Peek In Any File…” menu command.
Scrolling, selecting text, and copying are done just as in any Macintosh word processor. To select a portion of text, hold the mouse button down and drag the cursor over the area of text. Then use the Copy command under the Edit menu to copy the selected text. You can then paste the copied text into documents in other programs – your word processor, for example.
The Peek Window and Find commands make it easy to quickly find text in the file being viewed or in other files listed on the main Retrieve It! screen. These commands are discussed below. First we describe the Data, Resources, and “Try to hide funny characters” options.
Viewing Data or Resources
The two circles labeled “Data” and “Resources” at the top of the Peek Window are called radio buttons. (Like the buttons on a car radio, only one can be selected at any moment.) The circle that is filled in is selected.
If the Data radio button is selected then the Peek Window displays a part of the file called the Data. If the Resources radio button is selected then the Peek Window displays another part the file called Resources. Most word processors store text in the Data part of a file. Some applications store information (fonts, for example) in resources.
If the file being viewed doesn't have Data or doesn't have Resources then the corresponding radio button will be disabled. If both radio buttons are enabled, you can view either part of the file by selecting the corresponding radio button.
Hiding funny characters
As mentioned above, the Peek window doesn't interpret formatting characters or graphics like a word processor or graphics program would. The Peek window displays everything as text. Formatting characters, graphics, and other non-text characters will look funny -- that is, they will probably look like random characters.
To have Retrieve It! try to hide these funny looking characters, click in the box labeled “Try to hide funny characters” at the top of the Peek window. (The file itself is not affected, just the way it's displayed by the Peek window.) When the box is selected, it will be filled in with an X. To re-show the funny characters, click on the box again.
Retrieve It! might not be able to hide all of the funny characters, since it doesn't know exactly which characters were meant to be displayed as text by the application that was used to create the file. If you have that application, you can view the file as it was created using the Open command described above. You could also move the file to the desktop using the Move to Desktop menu command (described in Chapter 6) and then open the file by double clicking on its icon.
Finding text in the file
To find text in the file, type the text into the box at the top of the Peek window and click the Find button. Retrieve It! will search from the current selection point in the file to the end of the file for the next occurrences of the text. If the text is found, Retrieve It! will scroll to the occurrence of the text and highlight it as though you had selected it. Click the Find button again to search for the next occurrence of the text. If no more occurrences are found before the end of the file, Retrieve It! will beep. Click the Find button again to continue searching from the beginning of the file.
You can also invoke the Find command by selecting “Find” from the Retrieve It! menu or by typing the keyboard equivalent for the Find command, command-F. Keyboard equivalents are discussed in Chapter 6. We note here, however, that you'll find it worth while to learn the keyboard equivalent for the Find command and for the the three other Find commands shown in the Retrieve It! menu and discussed in the following sections. They make it easy to quickly find what you're looking for.
You can type several words or phrases separated by OR into the Find box at the top of the Peek Window. For example you could type:
apple or orange or “to be or not to be”
When you execute the Find command, Retrieve It! will scroll to the first occurrence of any of the words or phrases in the find box. The above example would find the next occurrence of the word "apple" or the word "orange" or the phrase "to be or not to be".
Finding text in the next or previous file
Suppose a search for the phrase "to be or not to be" turned up five files. These would be listed on Retrieve It!'s main screen. You could view the content of one of the files by selecting it and choosing the Peek command. (You could also use the keyboard equivalent for Peek, shown next to the Peek command in the Retrieve It! menu. The character that looks like a four leaf clover is often called the command key. To use the keyboard equivalent for a command, hold the command key down -- it’s to the left of the space bar -- and type the appropriate character -- P for the Peek command. In this document, we’ll write that as command-P.)
You can then use the Find command to find all occurrences of the phrase "to be or not to be" within the selected file. But suppose this file doesn't contain the particular occurrence of "to be or not to be" in which you were interested. You could close the Peek Window, go to the main Retrieve It! screen, select the next listed file (there were five, you'll recall), and choose the Peek command again to open the new file. But Retrieve It! provides a short cut.
Instead of closing the current Peek Window, you could use the “Find in Next File” command (command-N) from the Retrieve It! menu to find where "to be or not to be" occurs in the next file listed on Retrieve It!'s main screen. You could then use the Find command to find all occurrences of the phrase within the new file. If this file turns out not to have what you're looking for, you can use the “Find in Next File” command again to look in the third file, and so on, until you've found what you want or have gone through all five files that were originally found by Retrieve It!.
The “Find in Previous File” command (command-B) is just like the “Find in Next File” command, except it brings up the previous file in Retrieve It!'s list of found files, rather than the next file.
Finding Selected Text
If you select a bit of text in the file being viewed and then choose the “Find Selection” command (command-H) from the Retrieve It! menu, the text will be copied to the Find box at the top of the Peek Window and the next occurrence of the text will be found. You can then use the Find commands described above to find other occurrences of the selected text.
By using the Find commands, and their corresponding keyboard equivalents -- command-F, command-N, command-B, and command-H -- you can quickly browse the list of found files and get to the information you’re looking for.
Chapter 6: Retrieve It! Menu Commands
Each Retrieve It! menu command is described below. First, however, we describe how you can invoke menu commands using keyboard equivalents.
Keyboard equivalents for menu commands
Many menu commands can be typed on the keyboard as well as chosen from the menu. Keyboard equivalents for such commands are shown next to the commands in the menu. The four-leaf clover character is typed using the keyboard key to the left of the space bar. This document will use “command-” to represent it. For example, command-C following the Copy command in the Edit menu means you can copy selected text by holding down the command- key (the one to the left of the space bar) and typing C.
Many people find using keyboard equivalents to be easier than selecting menu commands, once they learn the keyboard equivalents. In Retrieve It!, you will probably find it worth while to learn the keyboard equivalents for the Peek, Move to Desktop, Open, and four Find commands. Pull down the Retrieve It! menu to see the keyboard equivalents for these commands.
Retrieve It! Menu Commands
Now we describe each Retrieve It! menu command:
About Retrieve It!
Selecting About Retrieve It! will bring up the about box for Retrieve It!. The about box has information about the program, including what version of the program you have.
Help...
Selecting Help... will bring up a window displaying the Retrieve It! help file, which describes how to use Retrieve It!. You can scroll through the file to find the information you need. You can also type in a word and click the “Find” button to find specific topics.
Show Operator Names
Selecting the command “Show Operator Names” will make a list of search operators appear. The menu command name becomes “Hide Operator Names” when the list is already visible. Choosing the "Hide Operator Names" command hides the list. Chapter 4 discusses how to use the search operators and the search operator list.
List by ...
List by Name, List by Kind, List by Date, and List in Order Found sort the list of found files by name, kind, date of last modification, or order found, respectively.
(The next four commands are only enabled when Retrieve It! has found and listed some files and you have selected one of them. The commands apply to the selected file.)
Move to Desktop (command-M)
Move to Desktop moves the selected file to the desktop on your Macintosh. The file's icon will appear on the right side of your screen. (If you're running system 6 without MultiFinder and an application other than Retrieve It! is running, you will have to quit the application to see the icon. If you're running MultiFinder or System 7, you might have to switch to the finder to see the icon.)
The Move to Desktop command is very useful for quickly getting to a file's icon, so you can copy, open, or delete it. To put the icon back where it came from, select it and choose the Put Away command (command-Y) from the finder's File menu.
Open (command-O)
The Open command behaves just like the Open button on the main Retrieve It! screen. It opens the selected file into the application that created it. See Chapter 5 for a more detailed description of the Open command.
Peek (command-P)
The Peek menu command behaves just like the Peek button on the main Retrieve It! screen. It brings up a window that you can use to view the selected file, scroll through it, find words in it, and select and copy portions of it (using the Copy command under the Edit menu). You can paste copied text into other documents. Chapter 5 details how to view files in Retrieve It!.
Peek In Any File…
Choose the “Peek In Any File…” command to view any file, including ones that aren't listed on Retrieve It!'s main screen. A screen like those used to open files in other Macintosh applications will appear, allowing you to choose a file to view.
Find (command-F)
Find in Previous File (command-B)
Find in Next File (command-N)
Find Selection (command-H)
The Find (command-F), Find in Previous File (command-B), Find in Next File (command-N), and Find Selection (command-H) commands are described in Chapter 5. They are only enabled when you're viewing a file. The keyboard equivalents for these four commands make it easy to quickly find which file among a list of found files holds the text you're looking for. They make finding a word in a list of files as easy as finding a word in one file.
