The result list right-click menu

Apart from the preview and edit links, you can display a pop-up menu by right-clicking over a paragraph in the result list. This menu has the following entries:

  • Preview

  • Open

  • Open With

  • Run Script

  • Copy File Name

  • Copy Url

  • Save to File

  • Find similar

  • Preview Parent document

  • Open Parent document

  • Open Snippets Window

The Preview and Open entries do the same thing as the corresponding links.

Open With (Unix-like systems) lets you open the document with one of the applications claiming to be able to handle its MIME type (the information comes from the .desktop files in /usr/share/applications).

Run Script allows starting an arbitrary command on the result file. It will only appear for results which are top-level files. See further for a more detailed description.

The Copy File Name and Copy Url copy the relevant data to the clipboard, for later pasting.

Save to File allows saving the contents of a result document to a chosen file. This entry will only appear if the document does not correspond to an existing file, but is a subdocument inside such a file (e.g.: an email attachment). It is especially useful to extract attachments with no associated editor.

The Open/Preview Parent document entries allow working with the higher level document (e.g. the email message an attachment comes from). Recoll is sometimes not totally accurate as to what it can or can't do in this area. For example the Parent entry will also appear for an email which is part of an mbox folder file, but you can't actually visualize the mbox (there will be an error dialog if you try).

If the document is a top-level file, Open Parent will start the default file manager on the enclosing filesystem directory.

The Find similar entry will select a number of relevant term from the current document and enter them into the simple search field. You can then start a simple search, with a good chance of finding documents related to the current result. I can't remember a single instance where this function was actually useful to me...

The Open Snippets Window entry will only appear for documents which support page breaks (typically PDF, Postscript, DVI). The snippets window lists extracts from the document, taken around search terms occurrences, along with the corresponding page number, as links which can be used to start the native viewer on the appropriate page. If the viewer supports it, its search function will also be primed with one of the search terms.