Currently, the Flat Search applies the search string to entire document.
Is there a way to limit the search scope to only a single node and its hierarchy?
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Currently there’s no way to do that, sorry about that!
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I just used flat search for the first time and I am terribly disappointed. I had ignored the flat search option in the past because I thought it meant a global search. Then I read a description and saw that it just eliminated all the irrelevant ancestors from the results. That sounded great! I thought of all the times that would have been useful. But weeks later I finally need it, try it, and discover that it forces a global search after all. Why?! If I want to flat search from Home, I’ll go home to perform the search. Why not let me flat search within my focus?
My workaround is to add a unique word like “isol8” to the title of my focus node and add ancestor:isol8 to my search terms. This is a hassle not because I have to add and remove the word in the title, but because many of my searches are complex saved searches, including multiple OR operators, which requires me to add ancestor:isol8 to each group of terms and operators. I normally use the same saved search strings in several places. This workaround means modifying the strings for every place I use them. Either that, or live without the advantage of the flat search.
Flat search has a laundry list of disadvantages much longer than your issues. For one, you can’t even edit anything in that view. Anyway, I’ve always found it a useless feature since seeing the tree above the results has never bothered me. Your results are highlighted in normal search, why isn’t that adequate? It’s always felt like a bloat feature, added to appease some picky people. Scope creep. If I was a dev I’d just remove flat search. It doesn’t fit into the philosophy of nested list outliners. If people want to work in outlines, they should bend their work philosophies to match, not bend the idea of outliner to match old paradigms. People always complain when dynalist/workflowy doesnt match the UIUX of Microsoft Word, and my reply is always then go use microsft word.
I agree that the inability to edit in the flat search is also a disappointment. The FlatFlowy script for Workflowy works within focus, allows editing, and Workflowy provides a very helpful count of the nodes found (as opposed to Dynalist’s matches found). I’m still on Dynalist for many of it’s other advantages. To answer your question, normal search isn’t adequate because results may be many levels deep across multiple branches. Search results that find a handful of items may extend multiple pages, requiring you to scroll and scan. A flat search puts all the results neatly into a single view.