Before consulting this list, please check to make sure you are running the latest version, which is HistoryHound 1.9.9. If you need an update, you can get one by going to the HistoryHound What's New page . If you have a problem that is not addressed here or feel a question should be here but isn't, please send mail to support@stclairsoft.com

• Can I make HistoryHound always search the latest news on particular sites?
  
• How do I get rid of pages that I don't want in my index?
  
• Can I search pages and files other than my browser Bookmarks and History?
  
• My browser isn't one of those supported by HistoryHound. Is there some way to add it myself?
  
• HistoryHound is slowing down my Mac when it indexes. How can I fix this?
  
• I'm getting an error that says "SearchKit could not open the index for..." What should I do?
  
• Where does HistoryHound keep its index files?
  
• Doesn't Safari 4 let me search my history already?
  
  

If you want HistoryHound to always have the latest version of a particular page in its index, you can create a ".monitor" file. Add the URLs for the pages to a text file with TextEdit, BBEdit, or some other plain text editor. Save the file with an extension of ".monitor", and then open HistoryHound's Preferences window (shown below).

In the "Searching" tab, click on the "+" button below the list of search items. A sheet will appear, asking you to specify an URL to add. Click on the "Choose file or folder" button and select your .monitor file. From the popup menu, select "Extract URLs from file" as the method for interpreting the file. Once you've done this, HistoryHound will download new copies of all the listed pages and replace the older versions of them in its index.

Open the Index Status window, shown below, by choosing it from HistoryHound's Window menu. In the bottom list, find the URL(s) you want to remove and then click the Remove button to take them out of your index

Note: You can use the Find command in the Edit menu to search for a particular URL. Holding down the command key while clicking on an URL allows you to select multiple URLs at the same time. Holding down the shift key while clicking on an URL will select everything between that item in the list and any already-selected item.

Another way to remove pages and prevent them from getting added to the index again is to add a filter string to HistoryHound's preferences. Choose Preferences from the HistoryHound menu and then click on the Filters tab to get to the window shown below.

Click on the "+" button to add a new filter, then type in a string that matches all or part of the URL that you want kept out of the index. When you click "OK" to close the preferences window, HistoryHound will ask you if you also want to use your new filter(s) to remove items already in the index.

Yes, you can add HTML and webarchive files on your hard disk, as well as regular text files. Please read the "Searching" discussion in the Preferences section of the HistoryHound Manual.

That certainly depends on the browser, but you can often add other browsers whose files are similar to those that are already supported. In HistoryHound's Searching preferences, click on the "+" button to bring up a window like the one shown below.

To add the history file for the Shiira web browser, for example, first find it on your hard disk (in Shiira's case, it's located at ~/Library/Shiira/History.plist). You can either type the path to the file in the supplied edit box, or click "Choose file or folder..." to select it with a standard Open dialog. Once you've done that, choose a method for interpreting the file by selecting one from the menu in the bottom half of the window (your version of HistoryHound may have more choices than the ones shown below). Since Shiira is based on WebKit, the same engine that powers Safari, it's a good bet that HistoryHound can interpret the file as Safari History (which it can). Note that the most general interpreter is the "Extract URLs From File" method -- it can scavenge URLs from many different file formats.

Oh, and by the way, if you add a browser using this method, let us know the settings by sending an email to support@stclairsoft.com. Then we can include it here and/or as part of the standard settings in the next release of HistoryHound. Thanks!

HistoryHound is designed to download and process multiple pages at a time. Sometimes the work involved in doing this places too much of a load on your computer. You can fix this by making a simple change in your HistoryHound preferences. Choose Preferences from the HistoryHound menu, then click on the Behavior tab:

Click on the Maximum number of concurrent downloads menu and change its value to 1.

1. Go to this folder: HOME/Library/Preferences/HistoryHound Index/
2. Locate the file or files that HistoryHound complained about, and move them to the Desktop.
3. Once you've done that, launch HistoryHound and choose "Preferences" from the HistoryHound application menu.
4. In the prefs, add a new search item by clicking on the "+" button below the list.
5. Select your old index file on the Desktop, and use the popup menu to tell HistoryHound to "Extract URLs from old index". That will get your data back. You'll need to add as many items as you have damaged index files.

HistoryHound's index files are kept in this folder folder: HOME/Library/Application Support/HistoryHound/

Note that the index information is stored in pairs of files: One for the text index itself, and one with an extension of ".data" that stores metadata associated with each page in the index. If you remove one file from this folder for any reason, you should remove its companion file to keep HistoryHound from getting confused.

Yes, as of version 4.0 you can search your Safari history from within Safari. However, HistoryHound still provides several advantages:

• HistoryHound lets you sort your search results in order of relevance. Safari only sorts by date or name, which can still make it hard to find what you're looking for.
• If you use more than one browser, HistoryHound will find pages you've visited in any of them, not just Safari.
• HistoryHound gives you much more control of your searches. You can search only within specific dates, performing different types of partial and boolean searches, and choose to search the history and bookmarks of only some of browsers you use.

We encourage you to download HistoryHound and make the comparison for yourself!