Viewers / Selective importing / Automatic indexing

[santipu]

Do you plan to offer internal viewers for common-use programs such as Word, Excel and Acrobat as you do for Text and HTML? Basically, I am not too comfortable with the idea of importing *everything* into a giant database, since it eventually grows so large that daily backups take too long. The only items, I would place in the program’s database would be anything that would be impractical to keep as a separate file, such as random notes and relatively small items. I much prefer to keep most of my files as individual entities and only import keywords into Ultra Recall. In such a working environment, it is a pain to have to click on the link and wait for the relevant application to open the file before you can take a look at it.

Presently, I use X1 to index my hard disks, and it is an absolute delight to see most files pop up in the internal viewer (in their “native” format) as soon as they are selected, with the ability to open the folder in the respective application for editing. However, with X1, of course, you cannot “annotate” the file and/or include your own keywords without modifying the file itself, which is not always possible or desirable. Also, whatever structure is desired for the files must be created via the Windows folders, whereas I like very much the possibility of linking file references to “folders” within Ultra Recall and even have any one reference assigned to more than one “folder”.

Another feature that I would like very much is the ability to import all the files in a Windows folder, or a folder structure, without creating duplicates. Again with the idea of NOT importing everything into the database, I would like to keep all my files in one single folder, or just a few folders, which I would then periodically index with Ultra Recall. However, if I now import again all files within a folder, this creates duplicate links of the files previously imported, and having to manually select the files not already imported is a chore.

Finally, coupled with the above, it would be ideal to have the possibility of importing files automatically from one or more predefined folders on a recurring basis. Again using the X1 example, I have the program set up so that it automatically starts (if not active at the time) every day at 1 PM and indexes my hard disk (again, in this case it only indexes the files that have been added since the last time the process was run, and it also deletes the references to the files that have been deleted), so my database is current every day

[kevina]

You can view any document directly in Ultra Recall that can be viewed in Internet Explorer (and potentially edit as well) by adding the appropriate extensions to the Browser Options File extensions to display in internal browser view: field. Examples of extensions this is available includes: .doc;.xls;.ppt ...

This option is available on the menu @ Tools | Options | Browser {tab}.
Documentation on this tab: http://www.kinook.com/UR/Manual/?browserdialog.htm

Local linked files opened this way will be editable if they aren't readonly where they stored. To enable the ability to edit these documents (when stored in Ultra Recall), add the appropriate extensions to the Documents Options File extensions to open stored documents writeable: field.

This option is available on the menu @ Tools | Options | Documents {tab}.
Documentation on this tab: http://www.kinook.com/UR/Manual/?documentsdialog.htm

[santipu]

OK; Got that! Works GREAT! Thanks. For some reason, I thought the option referred only to items stored in UR's internal database.

Do you think you will eventually offer the other two things (selective/automatic importing/indexing)?

[kevina]

The ability to "synchronize" an Ultra Recall Info Database/branch with a folder's contents is on the feature request list for a future version of Ultra Recall, which would eliminate the duplicates that occur now. This capability can be complicated because of the potential need to also remove items from Ultra Recall that are removed, and other related issues.

A way to schedule this "synchronization" above would be a natural extension of the capability and will also be considered for a future version of Ultra Recall.