FoxTrot Professional Search

I wish I had discovered FTP years ago. This is one of the best apps there is IMHO. If you have not realized it yet, Apple’s Finder is not perfectly reliable. During ten years of legal wrangling with the VA I had so many research papers, submissions, rejections, and rebuttals, not to mention all the research to support my arguments, and not to mention fighting with the Air Force to correct my records, I was very frustrated on more than one occasion. I was using HoudahSPot or other Finder liked (spotlight driven) search tools to find words I knew I had previously used (but could no longer remember which revision of a document I had used that term in). But my spotlight driven searches would too often show no results - even after I rebuilt the Spotlight. FTP changed everything for me. It is obsessively easy to schedule all the databases to be updated once a day as in 3 am or whenever you say. It is also very easy to tell FTP to rebuild or update any particular database that you have been using. One of the best parts, besides finally having reliable search results that I was not getting in Finder, is that when I am looking for something in a text document such as Scrivener, I don't have to open each document to see why the search engine said there was a result there for me, That is how HoudahSpot and other Finder based search tools work, you have to pen each document to find and copy out the phrase you were looking for to support your new submission with your old arguments. FTP provides an actual preview that allows you to search in and copy out of - without having to open each and every document. It also has a feature that I think is somewhat similar to NeoFinder, although NeoFinder never really took off for me. NF is supposed to be this great idea where you can catalog all your disks and volumes and find what you were looking for even if a volume is not currently mounted. That is the same thing that FTP does only it does it far better, especially when it comes to text. I can confidently recommend this program, especially if you depend on doing a a lot of writing, a lot of research, or just wanting an accurate result when searching with Finder.

Actually, the personal version is much cheaper than the professional one. I buy it now, as Spotlight doesn't do the job.

Apple's Spotlight is to FTP what TextEdit is to an advanced word processor. I've been using FTP for several years now: it's search capabilities are unmatched and I've never had a problem with their support; once they responded only after a couple of weeks but to tell me that my problem was solved, that it would be integrated in the forthcoming update and gave me a link to its beta version. For me, FTP is a 'must have'.

Works perfectly, I can search through nearly 1TB of files (almost 200,000 of them) in a matter of seconds. I've never found anything else to compare with it, not DEVONthink or Yojimbo or Evernote or Leap or Yep any other program. It searches through my files perfectly, it ranks the results, it previews the files. It does what I want perfectly.

support is not helpful via "help-Send message to support", but (after years of using this app) I learned that support is available and quick to respond at google groups, so I'm back to give this amazing app 5 stars again. the option is in the help menu under "visit foxtrot discussion group" ....

while i've always raved about foxtrot, i have to echo the voices here complaining about support. there's absolutely no response by the support team. it's a pity because it's such a fast search tool.

A licensed program is only as good as its support. Efforts to reach FTP support via the app and by email have not been answered. The app's Indexer spontaneously crashes multiple times per day and with every attempt to update the index. I've attempted to reinstall without success. Have abandoned hope and removed the app. Inexcusable for a program at this price point.

Software looks nice, but I didn't see a way to search for either:

1. Hidden files (files that start with a "."), or
2. Files inside of Mac Package files (for example an "App" file in the applications folder).

Note that EasyFind, a free search tool can do both 1. and 2. above.

These omissions, if I'm right, are a deal breaker.

Didn't see a way to contact the company other than a Google group I didn't want to "join" just to ask a question.

Let me first say that it was this program that allowed me to make the switch from PC to Mac in 2006 as I had been using Copernic Search on the PC and there was no Spotlight at that time. Over the years, Spotlight has improved substantially but still cannot match FoxTrot for: 1) A viewer that highlights search terms 2) The ability to search inside package files 3) The ability to create a custom index Of the above, the first two are absolutely essential for me and I would be hard-pressed to do with out them. Yes, there have been hiccups over the years but every problem has been fixed. Just this week, the crawler stopped working for me after the Yosemite update and the next day following my panicked email to tech support (in the evening), I got a response. The problem was not easy to solved but in two says they sent me a brand new build which completely resolved the issue. I would say tech support cannot be better than that! So, if you need search capabilities beyond what Spotlight can provide (and there are far more than what I listed above), then Foxtrot is the only game in town. I would still like them to work on the interface to make it more Mac-like, but that is a small thing in comparison to what it provides.

It's worked well for me, especially when I need to find and edit something in multiple documents. Technical support was indeed an issue 2 years ago but I received an instant reply to my latest query so that seems to have changed as well.

A SYSTEM-DEGRADING and USELESS product with ATROCIOUS technical support! I've never slammed a product like this before - this is the first time. Technical support and disregard for the customer is at the heart of the problem. Their background indexing processes hang. Always. Repeatedly. And when they do, my machine slows down so much, no other processing is possible - like backups. I've sent them crash reports, copies of the Activity Monitor screens and samples - no reply. I've attempted to post these issues in their Yahoo Group, but they review every posting and nothing negative or suggesting their product is less than stellar is allowed to post. I'm angry because I'm dependent upon this tool - or one like it (I can't find anything similar — if you can suggest something, please do). So, here's a potential 5-star product that, because of product mis-management and unreliability, is useless. It's really a shame.

Ok.. will start by stating that i have tried every document organizer/manager for mac out there: Devonthink, Eaglefiler, together, Yojimbo.. even Sente, Papers, Bookends and similar research tools. Spent many hours experimenting and looking for the tool to round off my workflow. In terms of indexing speed, which in my case is very important because I use hundreds of thousands of files, non of the above come close to Foxtrot. It is extremely fast. Indices are easy to manage, it has tabs, searches are bookmarked, layout works fine. I could not find a way to edit or add OpenMeta tags which would be nice. UI is not as polished as Devonthink, Together or Papers. I would also like to see it pick up my document's custom icons. Support seems distant and slow and they have only two tweets on their twitter account which is pretty sad considering its value. For this reasons I gave it a 4.5 instead of a 5.

I recently have purchased a license of FoxTrot Professional and it's really one of the best software investments I've made: At work, it has signified for me much less stress to find that letter, that PDF, that report, that email where the information I urgently needed was —having very often someone at the other side of the phone waiting for it. I also use it at home to find that citation I needed among my research papers or OCR scanned documents. I used to have other database applications, more tag orientend, but having to deal with Gigabites of texts, it simply was not the best approach. Now, although I still classify my info in mayor cathegories, I don't spend more time in tagging files, trying to guess when will I need to find them in order to arrange them accordingly. With FoxTrot I can find the context in the document I'm looking for, and not just the file to search in it. And the time scroll also lets me narrow the results, in real time. I also use Yojimbo very much, and it was a so nice surprise to find out that FoxTrot even searches the Yojimbo database without necessarily having it running. A computer is as powerful as the programms you run in it, and FoxTrot has really empowered me to instantly find the right information. It's excellent!

Even though two emails to the company went unanswered, I bought it. This is the equivalent product to DTSearch on Windows and performs just as well. It indexes files and content (including system files in both Libraries) so you can look for any word or phrase and expect a return set of what it found and where. It's so fast and the results so complete (on my early 2008 MacBook Pro) that no other desktop search product is worth paying for. My sole regret is the lack of responsiveness of the developers. But it's a hell of a product!

Has anyone figured out how to upgrade from version 2.5 to version 3? Several emails to the company have gone unanswered.

I am a management consultant that spends half his time writing proposals, writing papers for my doctoral studies or blogging. I'm always remembering an old file that I could use, but could never find ... that is until I found FoxTrot. On my old Windows system, I would use Google Desktop and maybe, after what seemed like an hour of searching, I might find what I was looking for. More often than not I would not find the file in question. Once I moved to Mac, the search function was just not enough. I bought an earlier version of FoxTrot and it was ready to go in almost no time at all. I was surprised at how fast it indexed all of my files. I have several old external drives hooked up and have more than a terabyte of old data. With FoxTrot, I was finding files that I didn't remember having. It was waaaaaay better than Google Desktop search. I now save countless hours of searching and have the confidence to know that if FoxTrot doesn't turn it up, I don't have the file. I sleep much better since I don't feel quite as disorganized. The newest version of FoxTrot put everything together in a seamless window rather than have optional windows to the side of the main search window. It is pretty darn simple. You search, you find, you get closure fast.

Excellent fast search capabilities with document previews. It does much more than spotlight. It is faster (almost instantaneous) and highlights the hits inside the document preview. Could use better documentation. You need to explore its features to see what it can do. I use DevonThing to organize documents, Tinderbox to organize notes, and Firefox to search my hard drive. The three together are an excellent combination.

I've noticed a couple of enhancements in 2.5 so far, more informative process icons for the indices and the ability to share archives over a local network. According to email sent to users there are also fixes for a few Snow Leopard issues

Nothing searches better than FoxTrot. My only gripe about it was that you could do very little with the found files except look at them. But I was wrong: I've discovered that you can drag from the list of found files into File Buddy and Leap windows. In File Buddy you can do almost anything to files except tag them, and Leap can do that. I'm now completely sold on this app.

Foxtrot Pro Search has no support. It won't index my Mail - and I've tried to get support twice. I get an automated response - but they don't bother to reply. Be warned! It's a pity, because the indexer is otherwise very impressive, and I'd be tempted to buy it if they supported the product properly.