Mini search window sorting order

💬General
#1

A small search window pops up when using move or link or template.

In my case, this scope is often polluted and what I’m looking for takes time to locate.

What’s the sorting order for these matches? Is there a way to pick up either a specific document or only the non-checked items?

#2

No, unfortunately search operators don’t work here.

It’s a bit weird. It treats word boundaries as wildcards. ab cd for example will find *ab*cd* in the current document, and then *ab*cd* in all other documents.

#3

I can understand that search operators in this small window would be an overkill. And also I see why it is a wildcard match prioritizing the current document before others.

Is there another way to solve my workflow need? Looking for ideas here:

  • I have one document where I work - let’s call it ‘work’
  • I have another document where I have checklists and code snippets - let’s call it ‘checklists’
  • I aim to quickly link items from work to checklists
  • But because the search order is current document first - I see the previous instances of ‘used’ checklists in work first and have to scroll down to find the desired item from checklist

Any workaround ideas? I do this 50 times a day, will save me a lot of headache.

#4

I do a few things that help

  1. I name things unique strings if I want to access them quicky.
    h1 home
    w1 work
    Then I know if I type those two characters, it’ll be the top result

  2. I only have 1 document with everything in it. This is how workflowy.com forces you to work. This is better for a lot of reasons, everything just works smoother. But I know this isn’t preferred to a lot of folks, but if possible, do it.

  3. I use keyboard macros. I’m using bettertouchtool for mac, but there’s AutoHotkey for windows and all sorts of others out there. I press command+1 and it moves the item to h1 home. I just recorded all my keystrokes doing it once, and set a hotkey to the macro.

1 Like
#5

Going to try these out. I am currently using code formatting to make things stand out (with some custom css). Let’s try AutoHotKey too.

I run some python to count new items per file - having different files helps in keeping a clean count, but I can workaround that.