Information and document processing?

Hi, I apologize if the title of this thred is somewhat cryptic, I wasn't sure how to best call it.

In short, my experience is that the quantity of work-related information documents on my pc is increasing to a point where I am losing a sense of WHAT I have - not to mention WHERE.

So far, in order to file documents I have been using a per-subject nested folder approach, and to search for documents I don't readily find I use the wonderful locate32
link

I am increasingly dissatisfied, the main reason being that during searches I fail to retrieve some relevant documents *and* I have to sort through too many results, so I am searching for an alternative - the one I am considering at the moment is some way to tag each document with relevant keywords.

And now - finally - my questions:
> Can you recommend any document tagging software?
> Any other application that helps you in organizing information (filing search retrieval)?
> What alternative approaches do you use?

Thanks to all for your contributions

 

Copernic Desktop Search http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/
Just install, set the options you want and go. No special tagging, organization or anything. I prefer it over Google and some others because it's not tied as closely to the web as they seem to be. Very customizable so it can work exactly as you want it to.

 

If you ask me, the best desktop search application is the Enterprise Client of X1
I'm not sure if this is what you want, though.

 

That's a cool name for an app!
BTW, I guess you are referring to X1 Professional Desktop Search Client - or am I mistaken?

lucas1985 I will investigate your and HAN's suggestions even though from specs Copernic does not seem to read Thunderbird 2 emails - on the other hand there is an interesting price difference.

You are right, a better desktop search solution is not necessarily what I am after. Apart from the drawback of the index size, which I imagine can grow quite large, it would seem that I still have to sort through the results of my searches - albeit more easily that with locate32 - and miss whatever relevant document does not contain the search string.

But I have no clear idea of which way to go, any comments are welcome.

 

The Enterprise Client is the free version
Another application of this kind is Exalead One Desktop (freeware and paidware versions)

Another approach is a document managing application like the one suggested by Peter2150.
What type of documents/data do you work with?

 

Nice suggestions, all of them.

Here are mine.

InfoRapid Search & Replace

As the name suggests, you can also replace individual letters or words but i always found it most useful in bringing to the surface text in documents i need to find but am inundated by the pure numbers of files. Freeware.

AVAFind

Lightning quick (finds as you type letters) file searcher. Build a database on install and updates it regularly. This is shareware however.