Why does Agent Ransack produces different search results from FileLocator Pro

Question

When running a search using Agent Ransack I find that sometimes I get different results than when running the same search using FileLocator Pro. Also, it appears that Agent Ransack sometimes runs faster than FileLocator Pro?

Answer 1

It's all down to how FileLocator Pro pre-processes documents for searching. If you have 'Enhanced File Searching->Office/PDF documents' checked in the Options tab then FileLocator Pro will pre-process any file extensions shown in the Settings link:

http://www.mythicsoft.com/filelocatorpro/help/options_advanced.htm

The pre-processing involves converting the file type to text for more accurate searching and presentation but can slow down the search. If 'Deep Search' or 'Also search raw document data of processed files' is checked then a file might be searched twice, once using the pre-processed data and once using the raw-data.

Agent Ransack, by comparison only pre-processes a fixed number of file formats (pdf, doc, xls, ppt, docx, xlsx, pptx, odt, ods, sxw, sxc) and doesn't allow 'Deep Searching' of files.

Other Reasons

1. ZIP, 7z or other compressed format searching is switched on in FileLocator Pro.
2. Outlook PST or MSG searching is switched on in FileLocator Pro.

Agent Ransack can't search either of these types of formats properly.