Better Cross Doc Search

I wish I could click into a doc and search all tables within that doc. It is a bit annoying that I can only search for docs, and then I have to manually look through all the tables int that doc.

HI Mohsin,

Something like this?
If you’re in a doc, you can search using the search box top left. It will not only find the search term in all tables, but any other object as well.

1 Like

It’s important to realize that you’re conflating two type of search. Searching for documents that contain (x) and searching inside documents for objects that contain (x) are two completely different ideas. In fact, there’s a tertiary aspect that is especially more complex for Coda - searching for (x) inside specific objects that may or may not contain yet other objects which may also contain additional objects.

Google - the LEADER in search - provides a way [in Drive] to find all documents that contain (x), but it does nothing to help you instantly see a list of the instances of (x) within each target document. It works the same with web pages. Indeed, it tells you where the gold is; it doesn’t mine it for you.

Imagine a Coda document with ten embedded tables. The search experience in a case like this is arguably far more complex. Do users expect the tool to find all occurrences across all tables? This might be useful in some cases, but woefully impractical in others. And what about a table with embedded pages and dense content in fields? What should the experience be when a table row contains another table and there are a thousand such rows each with a different table?

These are largely rhetorical questions for this thread, but feel free to layout the best search requirements you might imagine for the Codans given the massive power they’ve made possible. :wink:

Indeed, I’m not thrilled with the search features of Coda but we need to appreciate the deep complexities that the search engineers are up against.

@Bill_French

See my post above- Coda already allows searching all objects in a doc.

I did see it and I was aware of it.

@Mohsin_Amjed1 was annoyed that he had to perform this additional step which is not unlike that of any document environment which allows you to filter at the document level first, but then you need to engage in a separate query to find each of the hits inside each document. It’s a manual and tedious process and this is at the core of his complaint.

“If you’re in a doc…” is the predicate that should be eliminated if Coda wants to up its game on the findability front. It shouldn’t matter if you’re in or not in a doc.

Ideally, a single search UX should allow you to search at the document level as well as all three object layers in one query and provide a rapid means for drilling into specific documents/data/text within a unified collection of results.

I think this may become likely now that Packs are open to aftermarket developers. The approach would require a Pack that serves as a distributed indexing engine that updates a unified index somewhere much the way cross-docs syncs every hour.

1 Like

To clarify - the topic is better Cross Doc table search, not within a Doc search.

Has this been made possible yet? I’m trying to figure out how to have a search box on a page that will search all tables and information on that page.

This might be relevant.