Help getting started with Alfed and File Search

[marcusaurelius]

I tried Alfred a few years ago.  Recently updated it and bought the power pack.  I have an engineering degree and have done some programming from time to time when necessary.  My hope is/was that Alfred would be a good search tool for my local hard drive and personal cloud.  It seems kind of silly to me to pull up Alfred and enter a word and just get results from three search engines that Alfred conducted for me.  Am I missing something in terms of setting up Alfred to do a deep search of my own library?  I'd love to have a tool that search my own local collection of writings and documents - pdf, word docs, google docs, spreadsheets, et al.

[evanfuchs]

11 minutes ago, marcusaurelius said:

Am I missing something in terms of setting up Alfred to do a deep search of my own library?

Have you looked at the help? Take a look at just the first couple pages and I think you'll be on your way, including how to search for and open a file:

 

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/getting-started/

 

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/getting-started/first-5-minutes/

[marcusaurelius]

Thanks.  Looks like if you precede the phrase with "find" it will look for local file names rather than searching the web.  Looking for a way to search within the docs.

[choc]

Use the keyword "in"

So if you are looking for a letter starting with "Dear Marcus" in Dear Marcus should find it.

[marcusaurelius]

Oh wow.  This is awesome.  Thanks!

[vitor]

1 hour ago, marcusaurelius said:

Looks like if you precede the phrase with "find" it will look for local file names

 

You can also just press space (a ' will appear), or make your own search, even for online services.