Troubleshooting hit highlighting problems

Article: dts0112

Symptoms

After a search, dtSearch highlights the wrong words in a retrieved file

No hits are highlighted in a file

Possible Causes

The document was modified since it was indexed

An indexing setting was changed since the document was indexed

The document was indexed with a different version of dtSearch

The document was indexed with the dtSearch Spider, and you are searching using dtSearch Web

Browser security settings disabled JavaScript

Troubleshooting steps: incorrect words highlighted

(1) Perform the search in dtSearch Desktop

(2) After the search, click on the document that shows incorrect hit highlighting

(3) Click View > Document Information, or press Ctrl-Y.

A diagnostic dialog box will appear with a brief explanation of possible reasons for the hit highlighting problems.

To resolve the problem, update the index you searched with the "Clear index before adding documents" box checked. This will completely rebuild the index, ensuring that the index will reflect current indexing settings.

If the diagnostic dialog box does not identify any problems, check the search options you used in the search, and try repeating the search with no search options enabled. Synonym searching, phonic searching, and higher levels of fuzziness (3 or more) can generate a large number of word matches. If two of these search features are combined, the search may be so broad as to be useless. To see the words matched by different combinations of search features, click the Browse Words button in the Search Dialog box and try searching for words in your search request with various combinations of search features.

Additional information

After a search, dtSearch uses information in the index that you searched to highlight hits in a document. The index stores the location of each word in your documents, and dtSearch uses these word locations for hit highlighting. If the information in the index is out of date, the wrong words will be highlighted. Rebuilding the index fixes the problem by updating the index so that it is consistent with your documents and your dtSearch version and settings.

Troubleshooting steps: no words highlighted (dtSearch Desktop/Network)

A document can be retrieved with no words highlighted if the hits matched are in document properties that are not displayed.

PDF files: Open the PDF file in Adobe Reader and click Document Properties > Summary or press Ctrl+D (Ctrl+D will also work inside the dtSearch viewer) to see summary information fields that may contain your search terms.

HTML files: Right-click the HTML file in dtSearch, or in your web browser, and select "View Source". Look for a "META" tag containing the words you searched for.

Document properties in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and WordPerfect files will appear in dtSearch at the end of the document.

Troubleshooting steps: no words highlighted (dtSearch Web)

Try the same search in dtSearch Desktop. If no hits are highlighted in dtSearch Desktop, refer the to the dtSearch Desktop troubleshooting steps above.

If hits are highlighted in dtSearch Desktop and not in dtSearch Web, there are two possible reasons:

(1) The documents were indexed using the dtSearch Spider, and one of the following applies: (a) you have dtSearch Web 6.10 or earlier (older versions of dtSearch Web could not highlight hits in documents indexed using the dtSearch Spider); (b) the "HighlightHttpDocs" setting is disabled in the dtsearch_options.html file is either absent or set to 0, or (c) dtSearch Web was unable to download the page to apply hit highlight markings to it.

(2) Check the search results template file (the _options.html file generated by dtSearch Web Setup) to see if it is set to generate hit highlighted links or direct links. Change the %%DirectLink%% symbol to %%HighlightLink%% to switch to highlight links. See the "Generated Files" topic in dtSearch_Web.chm for more information on the _options.html file.

Troubleshooting steps: Next Hit/Prev Hit buttons do not work

If the documents are PDF files, you have to use the Next Hit/Prev Hit buttons on the Acrobat Reader toolbar rather than the dtSearch Next Hit/Prev Hit buttons. For more information, see Troubleshooting PDF hit highlighting problems in dtSearch Desktop.

If the problem affects other documents, and if you can see hit highlighting but clicking the Next Hit button has no effect, your browser security settings may have disabled JavaScript. dtSearch Desktop and dtSearch Web use JavaScript to provide hit navigation.