ms word docs meta info not displaying

[baker_9900]

I have searched the threads, updated the software, turned on my "use desc" configuration on zoom search tool...

But when my results are displayed, when searching word documents; all I see is the title and subject. Keywords never show up.

Help!

[David]

Where are the keywords? In the Word document as meta data or in a .desc file?

Can you give us the URL for an example document that you think has this problem and the URL for your search function.

Are you using the Javascript option or one of the ASP/PHP/CGI options?

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David

[baker_9900]

The Keywords are in the word document in the "properties" section. I do not use desc files.

I cannot give a URL as the site is password protected, sorry...any other info that I could provide? None of the word documents are displaying the "keyword" portion of the properties from the file when the search is performed. The title and subject variables always get displayed...

We are using the search.asp.

Thanks for your prompt response and easy clarifications.

[baker_9900]

indexing

I looked at the zdat files and could not find the keywords being indexed at all.

[Ray]

Make sure you have the following:

- Enabled "Use meta information from plugins when available" in the "Scan Options" tab of the Configuration window.

- Enabled "Meta keywords" from the "Indexing Options" tab of the Configuration window.

- Make sure that the DOC files in question have been indexed correctly. Check the Index log during/after indexing to see which files have been indexed or skipped. Turn on verbose mode for more skip information.

The "Use .desc files for plugin extensions" option is for meta information within .desc files only.

[baker_9900]

Item #1 I Ensured that "meta info from plugins when available" was and is checked.

Item #2 I Ensured that "meta keywords" was checked in indexing options

Item #3 All files in the directory are .doc, and all are being indexed, and showing up "green" as the scroll by. I turned on verbose and witnessed the .jpg files in the directory I told zoom to stay away from being skipped successfully.

I opened the zdat file named "zoom_descriptions.zdat" and found that this includes the subject field form the properties section of the word documents.

I opened the zdat file named "zoom_titles.zdat" and found that this included the title field from the properties section of the word documents.

I opened all the other zdat files and could not find the "keywords" that we use to list special words in each properties section of each word file in the "keywords" field.

I want to be clear that I am assuming the right things:
When I right-click on a closed Word Document I selecrt "properties" at the bottom of the drop-down menu that appears. A dialogue box opens and I select the "Summary" Tab. I see the following fields that can have information entered into them.

Title <this one appears for me in results
Subject<this ont appears for me in results
Author

Category
Keywords<I am hoping to get this one to appear as well.
Comments

Am I correct in these assumptions?

Thank you for your help on this. I really appreciate it.

[Ray]

That's correct. Zoom should be able to retrieve the keywords from that field and index the words, and they should appear in the "zoom_dictionary.zdat" file.

The only other thing I can think of is whether you are using an older version of the Word plugin (although the most recent version is more than a year old now). You can check this here nonetheless:
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/plugins.html

If you continue to have problems, e-mail us a copy of one of the DOC files which you are unable to index the keywords from, and also send us a copy of your ZCFG file. We can then take a closer look.

[baker_9900]

one last clarification

Yes: I have the plugin

YES: I looked in zoom_dictionat.zdat file and found the words that had been input to the Keywords field so they are being indexed.

NOW my final assumption that will most likely be false:

Assume I search a word such as "frank". "frank" is not in ANY word document keyword field. But we do have a person named frank and that is the title field of their word doc. When that single result is displayed, the title will appear as "frank" in blue as a link. The subject will appear in green. The keyword list that frank has included in his properties area does not appear as an iteam in the results page. I want that keyword list to appear. Am I thinking zoom does something that it actually does not?


AND NOW A NEW CAN OF WORMS

can you make zoom search the other meta properties of word documents and display them with the resulting hits despite context?

[Ray]

Re: one last clarification

First off, to clarify further, you should be able to do searches for the words in the keyword field of your DOC file, and it should return the correct DOC files containing those keyword fields.

If you have context description enabled, and the keyword is the first match within the content of the file, then the keyword should also display in your search result.

Assume I search a word such as "frank". "frank" is not in ANY word document keyword field. But we do have a person named frank and that is the title field of their word doc. When that single result is displayed, the title will appear as "frank" in blue as a link. The subject will appear in green. The keyword list that frank has included in his properties area does not appear as an iteam in the results page. I want that keyword list to appear. Am I thinking zoom does something that it actually does not?

Yes, you are, and it is an unusual expectation because that's not how meta keywords work in most search engines. Keywords are generally a list of words that you wish to associate with a file, despite the file not actually using that word in its content (or it is used to boost the relevancy of a page by increasing the number of occurances for a certain word). The meta keywords list can generally be (and typically are) randomly ordered and superfluous, as it is not supposed to be displayed to the end user, but only to inform the search engine internally.

Many documents would have very long lists of keywords which may simply be alternate spellings or synonyms, eg. "melody, mellody, tune, chorus, song, verse, track, recording, piece, music".

The only time that Zoom displays the meta keywords to the end user is when the user searches for a word which only matches a meta keyword, and the word does not appear anywhere else within the content of the file. In such a case, Zoom displays the meta keyword in the context description, so that the end user is aware that the word did occur in this document in some way or another, even if it will not appear on the actual page when they click through to it.

If you wish to have something that is always displayed alongside the search result (despite what the user searches for), you should enter this in the meta description field. The corresponding field to this in DOC files is the "Subject" field.

can you make zoom search the other meta properties of word documents and display them with the resulting hits despite context?

Which meta properties are you referring to? There are some additional fields such as "Manager", etc. There's a bunch of statistics like number of pages, word count, etc. But at this point, no, there are no plans to index these additional meta data at the moment. One reason is that no one else has asked for it. Second issue would be that the MS Word document format is not openly specified and it is not yet known how difficult it would be to extract all of this data.

[baker_9900]

Thank you Ray: For your patience, and explanation. I am sorry that I misunderstood the intended use of meta keywords.

Which meta properties are you referring to? There are some additional fields such as "Manager", etc.

The properties that I personally would be interested in would be:
Title, Subject, Author,Category,Keywords,Comments
There is also a place to create user defined meta information.

But I digress, this seems like a new thread.
I greatly appreciate all the help that you have given me and the time you have spent on MY ZOOM problem that turned out to be a problem of my ignorance of search technology.

Thanks again.