How to add a list of files, folders, or web sites to an index

Article: dts0164

In the dtSearch Update Index dialog box, you can add folders, files, or web sites to the list of items to be indexed by using the Add folder, Add file, and Add web buttons. If you have a long list of items to add to an index, this process can be time consuming. This article will describe two ways to add a large number of items quickly.

Paste a list of items into the "What to index" list.

(1) Open notepad or another text editor and make a list of the items that you want to add. The items have to be in the same format that dtSearch displays in the What to index list.

Files: Include the full path and filename for each file.
Folders: Include <+> after the name of a folder to automatically include subfolders.
Web sites: Enter the complete URL to the site, including the https://, and include a number inside <> marks after the URL indicating the crawl depth. Example:
https://www.example.com<4>

(2) Once you have completed the list, click Edit > Select All to select the entire list, and then Edit > Copy to copy it to the clipboard.

(3) Click Index > Update Index in dtSearch.

(4) Select the index that you want to add the list to

(5) Right-click in the What to index box and select the Paste list option from the menu. The list of items from your notepad file will be added to the list.

Directly Edit the Index Settings

dtSearch Desktop stores index settings in an XML file named index_o.ix in the index folder. This is an example of what this file looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<Filters>*.mbx phone*.txt</Filters>

<ExcludeFilters>*.MP3 *.SWF *.PSP *.BMP *.CHI *.CHM *.COM *.DLL *.EXE *.GIF *.HLP *.IVI *.IVT *.IX *.JPEG *.JPG *.MSI *.NLS *.OBJ *.OCX *.PST *.RMI *.SYS *.TIF *.TMP *.TTF *.VBX *.WAV *.WPG DRVSPACE.*</ExcludeFilters>

<Extra Files>Index_LastUpdate*.htm</Extra Files>

<Item>

<Name>G:\eudora</Name>

</Item>

</dtSearchIndexSettings>

For each item included in the index, there is an<Item> entry in the index_o.ix file that specifies the location of the item, crawl depth, whether to include subfolders (the "Recursive" field), etc. As long as you are careful to preserve the XML format of the data, you can edit this file directly in notepad. If you just want to add a list of items to an index, the "Paste List" approach described above will generally be easier because dtSearch will format the data as XML for you. Editing the index_o.ix file directly can be useful if you want to transfer a list of items from one index to another. To do this, you would just use notepad to transfer the <Item> blocks from one index_o.ix file to the other, and then update the index.