Search facility (issue)

[MaximusMercurius]

Hello DropBox,

It seems I only ever come on to these fora to either complain or rant, but please know that it is only in the interests of improvement of the - already quite good - services you provide.

Having made the switch from Google Docs to DropBox paper some year or so ago, I've noticed the changes and improvements over time.

A little while back, during my last university course, I noticed that DropBox added the feature that you can now search within documents, which is very handy when you have very many documents for assignments, translations, writing etc.

Recently, the search facility changed (not simply how it's presented in its GUI), and now it seems no longer possible to search within the documents themselves (i.e. when you run a search at the top, it no longer looks within the documents, but only at the documents' titles). This, in my opinion, has crippled its search facility.

I would very much urge you (please) to rectify this issue, because it is not anywhere near as good as it was a short while ago.

Max.

[Nancy · Accepted solution]

Welcome back to our forum, @MaximusMercurius! I hope you’re doing well.

Can you please clarify what’s the current Dropbox plan you see on this page? Please kindly note that full-text search is currently only available on paid subscriptions.

If you’re on a paid plan at the moment, can you send over a couple of screenshots showing what you see on your end, so that I can take a look? 

Ping me when you’re ready!

[MaximusMercurius]

So it’s a monetisation thing. I understand. Thank you for clearing that up.

[MaximusMercurius]

Hello DropBox admin.

I remember, at the time, when Dropbox disabled its search facility within DropboxPaper. (You can see it in this thread here). I have to say, that this is a very simple part of a text document system. As a coder myself, and an old school one (80's), I can quite safely say that this ability to search within a text document has been a part of computing for over two decades now.

I know that it is part of a monetisation process that DropBox has lost this facility for ordinary users, but I have to say that this has crippled my ability to function as a scholar (for I have thousands of Latin and ancient Greek translations, as well as many other book research projects on the go). Therefore, it is my business to recommend to any and all other scholars (and regular people) I meet to never use Dropbox, because its technology is several decades out of date.

All for thirty pieces of silver...