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who made this?
Matt Hart is the iLab architect. He’s visited hundreds of businesses and individuals, usually filing several patents during each project. He posted the first apps on this site.
Keyword Search for QuickBooks
Cost: Free
2.4MB
Find what you need fast with Keyword Search for QuickBooks
This add-on to QuickBooks creates a KeySearch menu option when installed, and lets you quickly search your QuickBooks data to find things like serial numbers.
Getting started with Keyword Search for Quickbooks
First, click on the download link and run the installer. If you were running QuickBooks, exit and restart. You'll see a new menu option next to Help called Innovation Add-ins, and Keyword Search is in that menu.
The first time you use Keyword Search, it indexes your QuickBooks data. It doesn't directly affect your QB data file, rather it creates a separate file for each company that you index. This initial index can take from several minutes to more than an hour, depending on the amount of QuickBooks data that you have. The tool will give you an estimated indexing time before you begin.
There is a checkbox that will be automatically checked the first time you select the KeySearch menu option. To increase the speed of the search results, the Keyword Search tool will refresh the indexes during the first daily use (refreshed with new, deleted, or modified data from the QB data file). You can click this Refresh Indexes checkbox to force it to refresh if, you've updated QB data and you want to find what they updated.
You're ready to search!. Just type something to find, anything. Amounts, names, descriptions, memos, notes, etc. When the results are shown, you can click on any colored, underlined text to jump directly to that data in QuickBooks.
If it turns out this does not meet your needs, you uninstall it by going to the Control Panel, selecting Add/Remove Programs, and clicking Change/Remove next Keyword Search for QuickBooks.
Notes and known issues with Keyword Search for QuickBooks
- QuickBooks 2007 has implemented a search feature based on the knowledge gained from this tool. If you have the 2007 or later version of QuickBooks, you can try the Google Desktop Search feature in QuickBooks, although some people still prefer Keyword Search.
- Not all types of inventory items are indexed. If you click on the setup button, you'll see what categories are indexed.
- This works with Google Desktop Search: Keysearch will display Google Desktop results below QB data results if you check that box (just below the Refresh indexes checkbox).
- If you are running Keyword Search on Windows Vista, you will need to make sure that your Internet Explorer security settings are set to default, or at least not more restrictive. ActiveX controls need to be allowed on local web pages for KS to work properly.
How to get help
If something comes up that you need help with, just post a comment right here.
How Keyword Search for Quickbooks came to be
One of the original inspirations for this was to support the use of serial numbers in QuickBooks. Many users currently add the serial number to the invoice by typing it into an otherwise blank item description field, but locating that serial number later was difficult -- Keysearch finds serial numbers entered into description and memo fields.
We love feedback
Have an idea for Keyword Search for QuickBooks? Questions about using it? We want to hear from you! Please leave a comment or send us an email.
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Matt 
| 7/21/08 at 7:16 am
Hi Charles,
I haven’t tested Keyword Search with Vista. It could be because I’m storing some information in the registry, although it’s in user-storage and not system storage areas.
Vista users are, for now, I think stuck with the GDS search in QB.
- Matt
Rudolph | 8/15/08 at 12:37 pm
Hi, I’m running Keyword Search without any problems in Vista Home Premium.
Actually GDS doesn’t want to work with my QB Premier 2007.
Kelly 
| 8/21/08 at 10:41 am
Hello!
I just wanted to let you know that i think this idea is great. I work for intuit in Canada and i work with a lot of accountants that would love to see this feature. It would save them time and in return make them more money but having them complete work faster.
cheers,
Kelly
Heidi | 8/26/08 at 7:32 am
Hello. If I have saved a packing slip as a pdf in a seperate folder on my desktop (i.e not in quickbooks; as it seems I can only save either an invoice or a packing slip in quickbooks and I have chosen to save all invoices instead but still need a copy of all packing slips) Is it possible to use this keyword search feature to search for packing slips saved elsewhere and open them through quickbooks?
Heidi
Matt | 8/28/08 at 6:59 am
Hi Heidi,
Keyword Search finds information contained in the QuickBooks data files, but it also integrates Google Desktop Search (GDS), so if you install that and search using Keyword Search, it will also query GDS and return both QuickBooks and GDS results. GDS can search PDF documents as well as many others, including email.
Regards,
- Matt
albert theno | 8/28/08 at 1:01 pm
i cant seem to paste into the search box am i doing something wrong or is this a needed improvement
Linda | 9/17/08 at 9:17 am
I love this tool but I find that it is not searching the memo field. It was working fine when I had it installed on one file within one version.
I have several versions QB2007 and QB2008 files on my computer and today attempted to search a sample file in QB2008 which is the file that is not returning results on the memo field.
Also I notice that an access database is created. When I try to open it in access it asks for a password. Can you release that to me?
Matt | 9/17/08 at 9:36 am
@albert - correct, you cannot paste into the Keyword search input box. It’s a known problem related to how QuickBooks places that type of display page into a “sandbox” of sorts. I can program around it, but it would require quite of bit of effort and change in the way the keywords are input, so I haven’t made that change.
- Matt
Matt | 9/17/08 at 9:41 am
Hi Linda,
What memo field are you referring to? It should catch the memo fields on the forms that it searches, such as invoices or sales orders.
Regarding the password, it’s kept secret because the keyword search index uses QuickBooks permissions to allow access to the data, preventing anyone from viewing confidential information.
Using access wouldn’t actually do very much for you, the data is stored in a sort of mashed together way with only a couple of known fields separated out for display purposes. You couldn’t run very useful reports out of it - nothing more than you can get by searching using the tool, anyway.
- Matt
Charles Russell | 7/17/08 at 10:50 am
I am having trouble getting this to work with Premier 2008 R5P and Vista Ultimate. I got the error when selecting it from the QB menu that it did not load properly. I am logged in as a regular (not admin) user in Vista. I ran the KeySearchRegister.bat file (took a few tries to get permissions worked out) and it ran successfully. However, I continue to get the warning. If I ignore the warning at try to search or index, QB crashes.