Search (Mac)

CMD+F will display the search window. This will search for text in the following topic attributes:

• Topic text
• Note text
• Link
• Resources

The search window will list the topics that contain the text and if possible highlight the matching word. In the following example you can see all instances of 'the' in the Welcome map.

Click on the text in the search results and it will take you to that topic in the map.

Hover over the text and a tooltip will tell you the full path to the map.

Searching through multiple maps

In the example above, the search is constrained to the current map ('This Map'.) If 'All Maps' is selected then it will look for that text in all the maps that the app is aware of. This is where things get interesting. For privacy reasons, the app will not look through your entire hard disk looking for maps to index. Instead, the app will remember each map that it has specifically opened (in the past) and search those when looking in 'All Maps'. Initially it has no 'memory' of maps it has opened historically - so this process starts with the installation of v5.8. In an attempt to boost this process initially, the app will look through all maps in the iThoughts folder in iCloud.

You can force the app to look through other folders for maps to index. Just drag/drop the folder onto the Search toolbar button (from Finder.) The app will then index any .itmz file it finds in that folder. This is a one time operation - so if another map is subsequently added to that folder it will not be indexed (unless, of course' you open that map in the app.) This is likely to happen if you use Dropbox to sync and you create a new map on a different device.

Top Tip: Going Back

Searching will often involve jumping to a different map, deciding that's not the result you're looking for and returning to the original. This is where you can use the CMD+[ shortcut to 'go back' to the previous map (just like in Safari)

Guess what? CMD+] will take you the other way!