Readme for FindAlike


Supported Operating Systems
Windows 7 and newer. FindAlike requires Microsoft Office 2007 or newer to be installed on host machines.


Read the Preparation section of the Preparation, Installation and Support document before installing
to check how FindAlike will operate in your environment.Look in FindAlike Suite n.txt to find current 
version of each component.


Installation Files

1) FindAlike_nnn.exe - self-extracting archive of FindAlike Desktop application. 
2) FindAlikeOffice_nnn.zip - archive of files for installing FindAlike Office Add-In 
to Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. 

nnn is version number


3) FindAlikeSupportFiles.zip containing 

FindAlike.sql - script for creating SQL Server database
FindAlike Prep Install Support.docx - information on preparation, 
installation and support for technical personnel
FindAlike User Manual.docx - Short version of Reference Manual
FindAlike Reference Manual.docx - Description of all FindAlike functionality
PDFFilter64Setup.msi - Adobe IFilter for extracting text from PDF files 
PDFShelltoolsTrialSetup.exe - evaluation copy of PDF Property Handler 
   PDF-ShellTools for working with tags on PDF files


Instructions for Installing Demo Desktop version with 30 day Demo license:

1) Click on the self-extracting installer FindAlike_nn.exe. A window advising the location of the default database will appear, and then one asking if all data indexed in the last 10 years should be processed. Answer Yes to create a crawl index of all this data. This may take many hours. FindAlike will run minimised with only the icon showing in the taskbar. Answer No if you wish to select on only files indexed after a certain date. A further window will the appear telling you how to specify the date. After clicking OK, click on the FindAlike icon in the taskbar to show the initial window. Click Show>>  and select the Crawler tab, on which the Start date for the crawl can be entered.

Instructions for Installing FindAlike Office
1) Ensure that Desktop version of FindAlike is installed
3) Extract all files from FindAlikeOffice_nn.zip (or checksum.zip) to a location on your computer's C: drive. This will create a folder called FindAlikeOffice_nn or checksum.If the folder has a checksum name, there will be a folder inside it whose will end in the version number nn of FindAlike.
4) Close all Office applications.
4) Open the FindAlikeOffice_nn folder and double-click on findalike.application. This will install the Office add-in to provide FindAlike functionality from Word, Outlook, Excel and Powerpoint. If a warning message "Publisher cannot be verified"  appears click Install button

More details of the expected screens are shown in the document FindAlike Prep Install Support.docx

To enter a New License key via the Desktop Application

1) Paste the license key string into the License Key box on the License screen and click Apply.
2) Close the License screen
3) Close FindAlike and re-open.

To determine if PDF file content is being indexed and is searchable. (This is unlikely to be the case for most domestic machines).

1) Show Indexing Options from Control Panel and select Advanced Options. Select the file types tab and scroll to extension pdf. If the Filter Description is File Properties Only, then PDF file content is not being indexed. 

To add PDF file content to Windows Search Index

1) Click on PDFFilter64.msi. This will install the Adobe PDF Ifilter which allows Windows Search indexer to index the text content of PDF files.
2) Select the Advanced Options tab in Indexing Options and click Rebuild Index. This will take some hours, depending on the number of files and emails on the machine.

To enable tagging of PDF files

1) Click on PDFShellToolsTrialSetup.exe. This will provide a 30-day trial license for PDF-Shelltools.
2) To enable searching  existing tags or keywords on PDF files, rebuild the search index. If only searching for PDF file tags created by FindAlike is required, no rebuild is required.

Additional Steps to Install Workgroup Versions

1) Create a SQL Server database using the script FindAlike.sql on the Network Crawler machine using SQL Server Express or SQL Server Local (no license cost).
2) Install FindAlike_nn.zip on the Network Crawler Machine
3) Enter the Workgroup License Key at the license screen
3) Change the Local and Network connections to point to the created SQL Server Database
4) Install FindAlike_nn and FindAlikeOffice_nn on user machines
5) Enter Workgroup License Key on user machines
6) Change Network Connection to point to created SQL server database on Network Crawler machine.