4

I am writing notes or documentation of software or private projects in Markdown. These single Markdown files are living either in a folder within the project or general notes are stored in Dropbox.
Finding information within projects is easy, using the Sublime Text fulltext search. But what about a global search over all *.md documents?

I am looking for a software that collects all *.md files across my system (need to be able to exclude files or folders to not have 1000 licence.md files from software libs included), indexes all files for fulltext search and display files grouped in a pane in their folders.

What I tried:

  • no software, just using Windows search and index file content - might be the easiest, but I am not sold to the quality and configuration.
  • grepWin - no index, configuration in one window. Has to be set up every time for that purpose.
  • I tried a software called FileLocator Pro that allowed me to setup an index, lots of options and nice contextual preview of the results plus saving of configuration. But it's also a bit too much for my purpose and not focused.

Those 3 options kind of work, but need always some sort of setup before starting the search (file pattern, excluding folders etc.).

TL;DR

I imagine a dedicated Markdown/text file based knowledge base like Evernote, without any import/export options. Just index and display. Organisation and editing is done natively in the file system.

Platform: Windows

0

3 Answers 3

1

Something based on Xapian, like Recoll:

http://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/pages/recoll-windows.html

It can be fine grained configured to exclude files or folders.

2
  • This is a great suggestion. Thank you! Here a quick hint what I had to do to index only *.md files. In Index Setting > Local Settings set Only mime types to text/plain and add .md = text/plain to the file mimemap in C:\Users\WindowsUser\AppData\Local\Recoll
    – marcus
    Nov 21, 2016 at 20:17
  • Still using Recoll! It's great!
    – marcus
    Feb 10, 2021 at 15:52
2

You can try Everything.

Try to search md files and add a content search parameter to search inside content.

1
  • Thanks for mentioning that. Already using Everything and totally trying this out now :)
    – marcus
    Jan 15, 2022 at 21:05
-1

It was a long time ago, but I was looking for something similar and findout a way using windows alone.

  1. Configure Windows Search Index to index .md files for full text search
  2. Create Windows Libraries and add all yours folders that contains md on it or
  3. Use PowerShell to search within yours files with yours rules

You can check how here where you can learn how to configure windows search index feature and here where you can learn how to use search index from powershell

To go further, build some code, ideas here where you can find guidance for how to use search index with a variaty of languages and here specific using python

Hope that it could help.

1
  • Please describe the content of each link, thanks!
    – Nicolas Raoul
    May 25, 2019 at 7:14

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.