The ability to right-click on some text in a note and select “Search” does not yield results when a path is included in the search term.
Example: In my note I select the text “Tech/Phone/Pixel 8 PRO LBT Switch Wallet Case.md”, I right-click and select “Search for”. No results because the search does not begin with path: .
Searching for something you know is in a folder can be frustrating.
Example: I’m looking for my mom’s postal code. I know I have a contact note for her. I search for “Contacts/mom”. No results. I search for path: Contacts/mom. No results. That’s because the full path is Agenda/Contacts/People/mom, and even though I do not have quotation marks around my search terms the search acts as though I do.
Proposed solution
Auto search path when a “/” is detected in the search bar, and do not make it an exact search, so that we can type Contacts/mom and get results like Agenda/Contacts/People/mom because the path includes folder Contacts and mom
Or, even better, have the default search just be a path search, since it catches paths AND files anyway. But again, it would better if it were an includes rather than exact. We already use quotation marks for exact anyway.
Rather than keeping bare text paths in your notes and searching them, why not convert them to links? If the path is incorrect as in your example, you can start a new link, and the autocomplete suggestions will help you find the file as you type.
Similarly, the built in Quick Switcher is a fuzzy filename searcher.
[quote=“CawlinTeffid, post:2, topic:99192, full:true”]
Rather than keeping bare text paths in your notes and searching them, why not convert them to [links]
Hi Cawlin. I appreciate the answer. It’s not quite a link issue though. I mean there is a difference between linking and searching, with different uses and contexts. I use links way too much, but not everything deserves one. And it’s a different context really. The right-click search function is to discover if you use the terms elsewhere, which might very well lead to creating a link, or not if it is a one-off.
And of course my 2nd example is not helped by a link, but would be greatly helped by my original suggestions.
OK, but your examples aren’t just words, they all involve folder paths, which are a way of pointing to a specific file. So why not make them links? If you don’t want to link them in advance, you could do it when you want to visit the file — select the whole path, type [[ twice to make it a link, and then click it.
Obsidian uses spaces to separate operators. So path: should be followed by the search term without a space.
A search for path:Contacts/mom will look for a substring in the path. However in your example there is no such substring. This should work better: path:People/mom
If you want to combine several search operators that do not form a substring, you can combine them with brackets, eg path:(Contacts mom)
By whose standards? I’m curious why you’d rather type a file path in your notes than have a simple link like Call [[mom]].
I agree with the different context.
Personally I don’t use right-click to search. I have so many notes in my vault, that simply right-clicking on a term wouldn’t produce meaningful results. I enter my search phrase directly in the side pane, because I have to refine it anyway.
I find Obsidian’s core plugin Backlinks much more useful to locate existing terms.
I’m still trying to understand the use case. If you want to find your mom’s contact info, there are much simpler options available.