Agent Ransack 2016

I’m really pleased to announce that Agent Ransack 2016 is now available.

Agent Ransack Download Page

It’s always a tricky balance deciding what new features to add to Agent Ransack and which to keep for the Pro (ie FileLocator Pro) user. Which new features will make Agent Ransack a nicer all-round product for the average ‘lite’ user without overloading on the extra features and control that the ‘pro’ user needs. I think Agent Ransack 2016 has found this balance, I hope you do too. So, what’s new?

statsSearch warnings/information

At the end of a search, Agent Ransack will now provide extra information on factors that might have effected the search results. This includes:

  • Errors that prevented files being searched, such as access rights or locked files.
  • Warnings for common mistakes, such as forgetting that you’d unchecked the ‘Sub folders’ option, or that you’d switched Match case on.
  • Information on which criteria was responsible for excluding files.

This feature has been in the Pro version for a while and saved my sanity on numerous occasions. It’s really, really useful.

Tabbed searching

Similar to most Internet browsers separate searches are now shown as different tabs.

keywordhighlightingKeyword highlighting

To allow for easier reading of results individual keywords are now highlighted in separate colors.

Boolean support on File Name criteria

Once upon a time Agent Ransack only supported regular expressions, which if you didn’t understand could appear quite arcane, so DOS expression support was added. However, increasingly new Agent Ransack users expect to write Boolean expressions, which Agent Ransack 2016 now supports. So file name criteria can now be written like this:

.txt OR .doc

Or something more complex like:

help NOT (.dll OR .png)

searchthreadsSearch threads

Ever wondered why a search was taking so long? Well, the Search Threads window now shows what each separate search thread is searching.

Really useful for understanding what is being searched.

ifiltersFull IFilter support

Agent Ransack now supports all IFilters registered rather than a predefined subset.

There is even an IFilter Settings dialog to view the status of available IFilters.

Other changes

There are plenty of other small changes, including:

  • Agent Ransack icon that works well for dark backgrounds
  • Exclude folders
  • Faster searching
  • UTF-8 auto detection
  • Sticky sort order
  • Improved date/time parsing
  • Installation issues
  • Various bug fixes
  • and more…

but there’s one change that Windows XP users will not like. I’m afraid Agent Ransack 2016 does not support it. Sorry.

The FileLocator Pro Challenge

As I said before it’s a fine balance of which features to add and which to leave. Agent Ransack, while a great search tool, is just a taste of what’s available in FileLocator Pro. FileLocator Pro’s text viewing functionality is amazingly useful while the new caching and indexing features turn long searches into split-second operations. As one recent FileLocator Pro convert said:

“Love FileLocator Pro. Don’t know what took me so long to buy it. Agent Ransack was so good. File-preview was what moved me off the dime… I didn’t know it was this good. Thanks!”

So why not take the FileLocator Pro challenge? Just try it out for the one month free trial period and if you don’t like it or if it simply doesn’t offer you anything you need stick with Agent Ransack. Ultimately, Agent Ransack is only possible because of FileLocator Pro so please don’t dismiss FileLocator Pro as something only ‘other’ people use.

Thank you

Which ever product you do  decide to use my thanks go out to you. Your enthusiastic requests, bug reports, and general support keep making Mythicsoft search tools better and better.

18 thoughts on “Agent Ransack 2016

  1. Biep

    Great work – and wonderful to put all that in the free version!
    One tiny thing: the task bars have handles, but I cannot move the icon bar to the right of the menu bar – which would save me precious screen real estate.

  2. Ransack fan

    Ce logiciel fait partie des indispensables, sinon comment retrouver des fichiers qui contiennent une chaine de caractères?
    En plus c’est très rapide

  3. Markus

    Agent Ransack makes my life so much easier. Especially for searching log files or source code it has become indispensable to me, while windows’s own search capabilities are so poor. I even convinced my boss to buy 3 supporter licenses.

    Best,
    Markus

  4. Richard

    Its primary use for me was in Windows XP.
    Please make an XP version. Millions of users still dual-boot with XP or use it as their main OS. Please make an XP version that has some, or all, of these updates (mainly boolean support). Thank you

  5. markg1234

    Running an old version, as I think 2016 is a regression. It’s added complexity.

    I can’t search for files containing say .Received( 1 ).FireEvent

    Regardless of if I set it to boolean or regex, it wants to try and interpret this, not just search for ir. Please add an option for NONE for Filename and Content search options.

    1. Dave Vest

      With Boolean expressions try using quotes if you want the exact phrase, e.g.

      “.Received( 1 ).FireEvent”

      FileLocator Pro has more options for expression types, including ‘Plain text’ for when you don’t want Boolean or Regex processing.

  6. MarkG

    And if I want to search quotes?? I“.Received( 1 ).FireEvent” I need to learn how to escape them? The simplicity of previous versions has been lost IMHO

    A none option is needed.

    1. Dave Vest

      I get your point but the Boolean/Regex option has been the standard functionality since AR 2010, and was probably the highest requested feature for that release. Every release we make a judgement call on what are the essential features for the majority of Agent Ransack users. For most users it works great. For the people who’d like more control over how the search functionality operates we recommend FileLocator Pro.

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