Why you need indexing software. Right now.

Don’tcha love the alarmist headlines? Really catch the eye, don’t they? Anyway, I am quite serious. Following up on yesterday’s entry about the top requests for help I get at PR firms, I’m going to talk about one of the biggest issues around: Information management.

So, you probably have a gajillion files on your computer — press releases, drafts, media lists, passwords written in Word documents and forgotten — and a whole lot more on your company intranet. I can’t tell you the number of times I had to put together a briefing document for a meeting I’d set up with a reporter and used my indexing software to look up a document made for this reporter by a colleague. It was just sitting there on the intranet, likely never to be used by anyone again — but it ended up shaving 15 minutes off my task.

I’m going to show you how to take back control of your information and how to make use of all that data that is languishing on your intranet.

Indexing software — Google or Copernic, take your pick
Indexing software scans every single document on your computer — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, whatever — and creates an index of their contents. Whenever you run a search looking for key words or sentences, the software checks against its index to see where th e words pop up and delivers the results for you to review. The beauty of this is that it is FAST and ACCURATE. Heads up, though — depending on the amount of documents on your computer and Intranet, indexing software could take anywhere from hours to days to comb through all your stuff. However, once complete the process does not have to be repeated.

I highly recommend Copernic’s Desktop Search, hands down the best indexer available. After you run a search, Copernic provides a handy dandy preview of your document within its own window so you don’t have to open it up to see what’s inside. It has a swanky interface and, of course, is blazingly fast. Better yet, it can easily be told to index the contents of your intranet.

Alternatively, Google just announced their new Google Desktop 5 product (click here for the review by my favorite person ever, Rafe Needleman) that, besides having cute little widgets, can create a Google search for your computer. Yes, you can surf the documents, spreadsheets, presos, even PDFs on your computer just like you would Google. You can download it here.