Installation issues
VCRUNTIME140.dll was not found
This message will sometimes occur when starting the Recoll GUI for the first time after installation. I need to fix the installation, but, meanwhile, please go to this Microsoft support page and install both the X86 and X64 versions of vc_redist.
Additional aspell dictionaries
The Recoll installation comes with the aspell english dictionaries. Dictionaries for other languages can be found here along with installation instructions.
Changing the interface language
Recoll will try to use the language from the Windows installation. Unfortunately, many Recoll message translations are incomplete or bad. The English one is the default and complete of course. The French one is correct, and usually complete or almost complete.
You can use the -L command line option to change the default language for the interface, e.g. for English:
recoll -L en
The easiest way to do this is to edit the command in the shortcut properties if you have one on your desktop. Change the "target" property in the Windows shortcut tab to something like:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Recoll\recoll.exe" -L en
Windows preventing Recoll from making system calls
It seems that it sometimes happen that Windows detects Recoll, and specially the webengine component used for displaying the results as a security risk, and prevent it from making system calls. This will manifest itself with things not working and the following kind of messages in the Windows log:
Warning Microsoft-Windows-Security-Mitigations/KernelMode Microsoft-Windows-Security-Mitigations Process '\Device\HarddiskVolume6\Program Files (x86)\Recoll\QtWebEngineProcess.exe' (PID xxxx) was blocked from making system calls to Win32k.sys
Nick, a kind Recoll user found a solution:
Within Windows Settings, search for 'exploit protection'. Add an entry that points to recoll.exe. Find the section entitled, 'Disable Win32k system calls' and, within that, click 'Override system setting'. Then set the slider that is entitled, er, 'Off' to . . er, 'Off'. That’s it. I do not think that one needs to reboot.
Using bigger fonts on High DPI displays
You can use the Preferences→GUI configuration→User Interface→Display scale
control (near the bottom of the tab) to scale up the interface.
Opening PDF documents at the correct page
By installation default, the Recoll GUI will open PDF documents with the Windows Shell default application. However, this opens the document at the default location (usually the first page), and will not allow supplying additional parameters like a page number (where the search term is first found), or a search string.
This can be changed from the GUI Preferences menu.
Go to Preferences→GUI Configuration→Choose editor applications
Select application/pdf
You should see that the application listed is "Desktop Default"
You can change this by checking Exception to Desktop preferences
in the lower frame, and then:
-
Enter an explicit command line to use
-
Click
Apply to current selection
-
Click
Close
-
Click
OK
in the main preferences dialog.
Here follows the command lines for the three applications I tried. The paths may need to be adjusted depending on where the app is actually installed on your system. Do use forward slashes, and double quote the path if needed (because of the white space in "Program Files").
Evince is a Gnome desktop application, and a Windows port is available. It is the only PDF viewer which I have found able to take a search string parameter in addition to the target page number.
Evince is installed in the User directory by default, and the exact path will need adjustment for the user name and the version number:
C:/Users/bill/AppData/Local/Apps/Evince-2.32.0.145/bin/evince --page-index=%p --find=%s %f
okular is a KDE application with a Windows port, available from the Microsoft store. It can take a page number on the command line, but not a search string.
okular --unique -p %p %f
"C:/Program Files (x86)/Foxit Software/Foxit Reader/FoxitReader.exe" %f /A page=%p
"C:/Program Files/SumatraPDF/SumatraPDF.exe" -page %p %f
Using an alternate configuration directory
This tip is useful if you want to manage several configurations, or if you
really have some reason to not let the configuration directory stay in its
default location ($HOMEDIR/AppData/Local/Recoll). If your concern is only
about storage space, and you do not actually want to manage multiple
configuration directories, you can more simply change the index storage
location from the GUI Index Configuration
panel, Database
directory name
section.
If you really need separate configurations, the easiest approach is to create a shortcut on the desktop and have it start the GUI with a '-c' option. For example, set the shortcut’s 'Target' to something like:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Recoll\recoll.exe" -c c:/path/to/my/configdir
Do use forward slashes for the configuration directory path. This will hopefully be fixed some day.
You will need to create the configuration directory, Recoll will not do it by itself. You can just leave it empty, Recoll will then propose to start the configuration editor.
You can find a more complete and general explanation about using shortcuts, for example on this page.
Python missing dll issue
It may happen that you get something similar to the following screenshot while indexing. This is a known issue with the Microsoft toolchain used to generate the official Python executable bundled with the Recoll installation. It should only occur on older Windows versions (not on Windows 10). Sorry about the French messages, the important part is the dll name.
If you get this, it is essential to fix the problem, else the contents of most types of documents (e.g. PDF, MS-Word) will not be indexed..
Please follow the instructions on this page on the Microsoft support site.
Installing the Python extension and running the WEBUI
You can use the Python extension to query the index. The API manual is here:
Among other uses, installing the extension allows using the Recoll WEBUI on Windows, see the detailed installation instructions.
The Python module is distributed for several Python versions and located inside the installed package, under the following directory:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Recoll\Share\dist\
For example, depending on current Recoll and Python versions, you could have:
Recoll-1.31.0-cp37-cp37m-win32.whl Recoll-1.31.0-cp38-cp38-win32.whl Recoll-1.31.0-cp39-cp39-win32.whl
It would be possible to use the bundled Recoll copy of Python to run the extension, but, because the Recoll bundled copy is incomplete, lacking pip, among other things. it’s probably more convenient to have a separate full copy of Python 32 bits
You can install the extension, for example for Python 3.7, with something like:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Python37-32\Python.exe" -m pip install "C:\Program Files (x86)\Recoll\Share\dist\Recoll-1.31.0-cp37-cp37m-win32.whl"
You should then be able to import it from the standard Python command.
Known problems and limitations
-
When filtering the search with a
dir:
clause, an absolute path should be specified as/c/mydir
instead ofc:/mydir
. This will be the case if you browse for the directory, but it will not be corrected if you enter it by typing. -
Indexing is quite slow compared to the Linux version, especially when using external commands (e.g. for PDF files). I don’t know if this is a case of my doing something stupid, or if the general architecture is really bad fitted for Windows. If someone with good Windows programming knowledge reads this, I’d be very interested by a discussion. The Linux and Windows index formats are compatible, so, if you have shared Linux/Windows data, it’s best to process it on Linux.