Integration of Everything in Open/Save as dialogs

[antonio]

Hi,

In my opinion, this software remains unbeaten. Best in class definitely.

Many users find the typical browsing experience in Open/Save as dialogs very annoying. You have to expand folders and subfolders in order to find the path where a file is to be saved or where a stored file to be open is located. And, worst of it all, in very complex folder environments, sometimes one doesn't know exactly the path to be followed to get to the desired location.

Everything is already a very powerful tool to make this process more straightforward. But I wonder if it would be at all possible to call Everything search from the Open/Save as dialog. The workflow I imagine is as follows:

1) In an open Word file, for example, I call for the Save as dialog.
2) From within such dialog, I call the Everything bar and type the words matching the path in which I want to save the open file.
3) Once Everything finds it, I press Enter.
4) Everything closes and the path passes to the Save as dialog, so I just need to write the file name and click Ok to save the file in the desired location.

Many thanks. Keep up the good work.

Kind regards

[gawkla]

Great Idea.
I need exactly the same feature. Any update on this idea?

[klarah]

i created for me a solution long time ago, which solved this problem for me:

a second instance of Everything opens per hotkey with a user set filter, depending on the current application window, and returns and inserts the chosen (executed) file-/pathname at the former active cursor position, which is for example the filename text box in the file-open dialog box.

this solution is not perfect and has an issue which i can live with so far: As Everything doesn't know where its being called from, it returns the chosen result (as its closes its window on execute) to the last activated window (just based on Windows behavior)... so no other window should pop up or become activated in between.

The solution works with a autohotkey and a vbs script :

the autohotkey script waits for the key combination WIN-F and passes a copy of a marked text and an extension filter depending on the active window to a second instance (i named it "file") of everything.exe:

Everything-file_WIN_F.ahk

Code: Select all

#f::
;clear clipboard
clipboard=
;copy marked text
Send ^c	

; set extension filter depending on the active window,can be discovert with the tool Window Sniper
if WinActive("aahk_exe WINWORD.EXE")
	ext = "ext:doc;docx"
else if WinActive("ahk_exe PDFXCview.exe")
	ext ="ext:PDF"
else if WinActive("ahk_exe Excel.exe")
	ext ="ext:xls;csv"
else if WinActive("ahk_exe SciTE.exe")
	ext ="ext:py;bat;vbs"
else if WinActive("ahk_exe vlc.exe")
	ext ="ext:mp4;wmv;mpg"
else if WinActive("ahk_exe OUTLOOK.EXE")
	ext ="ext:pst"
else
	ext=
;pass clipboard and extension to everything.exe 	
Run Everything.exe -instance "file" -search "%clipboard% %ext%" -filter "everything"

WinWaitActive, ahk_exe Everything.exe, , 2
if ErrorLevel
{
            MsgBox, WinWait timed out.
            return
}

if ext != ""
	Send ^{Left}
	
;marks the clipboard text in the search box for being replaced easily
Send {Left}+^{home}

the vbs-script comes into action, when a filename or path in the result window gets executed. it simply inserts the argument, which it was called with, per sendkey at the last active focus position.

for this behavior two options of everything need to be set once the Everything-window appears:

in the result section:
"Close window on execute" must be on

in the context-menu section (and this is the reason for the second program instance):
the arguments for the first 3 "Context menu items" should be:
$exec("<path>" "%1")
(<path> is the path to the vbs-script)

Everything-file.vbs

Code: Select all

Option Explicit
Dim wshShell, args

Set wshShell= CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set args = Wscript.Arguments

wshShell.SendKeys args(0)
WScript.Quit

i remember having some problems setting the options for the 2. instance of Everything. The settings didn't stay or interfered with the 1. instance and i cannot remember how i solved it, but i think its been discussed or described here somewhere in the board.

maybe i could help you... and maybe its also a nice function which could be implemented into Everything?... replacing anywhere a marked keyword with a path or filename based on a search with a user set context based filter, initiated with a hotkey... would be nice!

[gawkla]

Heloo All.
I found this old post inside "Suggestions" because I tried to find exact this integration.
It will be veru usefull to have easy possibility to pass search results into "Open/Save file dialog". Any better hints for this feature?

[NotNull]

If you are a little adventurous, you might want to try Jump to Folder (accessible through this page.