The Best Things in Life Really Are Free: A Thumbs Down To Copernic Desktop Search for Pay Version

Those of you who have been around for a while know that one of my favorite software products of all time has been Copernic Desktop Search.  Two years ago, I downloaded the free desktop and network search tool which essentially pre-indexes all of your emails and selected files so that you could search for virtually anything and the results would come back in less than a second.  In fact, my entire email process changed as a result of Copernic.  No longer did I file any emails, delete spam or otherwise.  I treated email as a big data drop and simply used Copernic search in order to almost instantly identify any single email, or group of emails. 

About four months ago, my Copernic stopped working.  The company apparently had decided to abandon its free version for network search (you can still apparently get a free version to search only your own computer) and start charging $49.95 per license for its professional edition and $59.95 for its corporate edition. 

Normally, this wouldn’t bother me at all.  Copernic deserves a license fee for its otherwise amazing product…except that it’s no longer an amazing product.  In fact, my new “for pay” version has barely worked since I installed it.  It is prone to crash, freezes up, and does not deliver returns nearly like it used to.  For whatever reason, I was never able to get it to index my Outlook archives, essentially rendering my email search process useless.  You can either “for sure” find what you’re looking for using this kind of tool or not.  If it’s not reliable, then you likely won’t use it at all.

The search tool that comes with Microsoft Windows has always been downright awful.  I am now left to wonder, is there a desktop and network search tool that will get the job done?

I’d be interested in anyone out there who has a good client and network side pre-indexing search tool that will pull all types of data files and integrate fully with Outlook.  In the meantime, my plan is to contact Copernic and let them know my problems.  I’ll let you know how customer support goes and whether or not my experience is the exception or the rule…

Comments

[jvl]

Did you buy the PRO or corporate version?

I have not had issues with the PRO version. contact tech support using their online web form and let them know you are a paid user and share with them your blog. Make sure you have the latest version as they have made multiple updates and patches. It might take a while to get a response, but they have gotten back to me in the past for the "support ticket" i had opened, they said they needed to try to recreate the enviroment to see the problem. It was worth contacting tech support as their desktop search (When working) is the best.

http://www.copernic.com/en/support/form-contactsupport.html

[GAL]

Pro Version. Thanks for the link. I plan on allowing them an opportunity to make me a satisfied customer (again).

[john levon]

i hope it works out for you. they do take a while but they generally get it right. also check out their new free mobile preview version. it is amazing.

http://www.copernic.com/en/products/mobile/

[Dale Straus]

LookOut, an add-in for Outlook 2003, was bought and "deep-sixed" by Microsoft in favor of its worthless search engine. In my experience LookOut is superior to Copernic, and thanks to its original designer, with a little hacking, can be used with Outlook 2007:

http://www.belshe.com/2007/12/06/how-to-install-lookout-on-outlook-2007/