Cancel Content Search does not always work

[froggie]

Search: z*.pdf content:x

EV says Querying, but cancel content search does not work. No cpu usage in task mgr.

I have seen this with other suffixes, but not easily reproducible as this is. Have to exit and/or cancel in task mgr to clear this. 1413b.

Cancel does work (usually) for some other suffixes.

I assume something wrong with the pdf interface (but what?), but still should be able to cancel, I would think.

[void]

Everything will check the cancel flag for each 'chunk' of pdf content.

Sounds like the pdf iFilter has hang.
If you would like to know the pdf file causing the hang, please send a mini crash dump.

Please try a different PDF iFilter.
Third party PDF iFilters can be installed.
You can set the iFilter used by Everything under Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> content_ifilter_handlers

For example:
To set Everything to use the Windows PDF iFilter:

• In Everything 1.5, from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the Advanced tab on the left.
• To the right of Show settings containing, search for:
  ifilter
• Select: content_ifilter_handlers
• Set the value to: [{"filter":"*.pdf","handler":"{6C337B26-3E38-4F98-813B-FBA18BAB64F5}"}]
• Click OK.

content_ifilter_handlers

[froggie]

Thank you. That works fine. There was nothing in that field before I inserted the values you indicated.

Two questions:

Could that please be the default? Using another pdf iFilter seems like it would only be done by someone with a specialized need who is likely to be able to deal with the fallout.

Could cancel be strong enough to override the bad filter and cancel the search - even if it had to restart Everything.

Again, the average user might just be mystified and frustrated by this, having no idea that some pdf program they installed also installed an iFilter -- having no idea of how to deal with it. I had a suspicion of what it was but still did not know how to work around the problem.

[void]

Could that please be the default?

The default is to use the system registered iFilter.
Same as Windows Explorer and your Windows Index.
Third party PDF viewers can (and often do) install their own PDF iFilter.

Could cancel be strong enough to override the bad filter and cancel the search - even if it had to restart Everything.

Not if the iFilter hangs.
Everything requests a chunk of text from the iFilter, but it never completes.
I have plans in a future version of Everything to move content indexing to a separate process. This way iFilters that hang or crash will not bring down Everything.



For now, your best option is to remove the PDF files causing the PDF iFilter to hang.
Enable debug logging to see which PDF file is being opened to read content.