How does GoogleDesktop cache my word files?

SHAKESPEARE_SIS

GoogleDesktop is just too good at finding stuff!! It can find word documents that i haven't even saved. Anybody know how it does this? I've checked and found that COM Add-ins listed in Word has a "GoogleDesktopOfficeAdd-in" listed - and i verified that this is doing the caching. However, I'd like to know how. I wrote a basic word add-in, that generated a new document, saved it, then pasted some text into it. The pasted text ended up in the google desktop cache - so it doesn't look like it used the document save event in Word to trigger the caching. Anbody know what the trigger event is?

aidan_walsh

I would presume Google Desktop checks for open instances of Word, and uses the plugin to scan the document while its in memory.

SHAKESPEARE_SIS

Yea, but how does it scan it in memory? As a COM add-in (I think) that there are a limited number of triggers that it can implement handlers for eg. DocumentOpen, Document Close, Document Save etc. But I don't think that it uses the standard ones (at least the ones i know about)!

seamus

While you work on a document, Word progressively saves it in .tmp files - regardless of whether you've saved it, or have autosave turned on. Word will also create .wbk and .asd files containing the text of the document (Word Backup and AutoSave Document, respectively). I can only assume GoogleDesktop scans all files containing text, even if they're subsequently deleted.

SHAKESPEARE_SIS

Hi seamus, thanks for that but I don't think it uses temporary files on disk - if it did, then it wouldn't need to be a Word plug-in.

seamus

D'oh! Didn't read your original post properly

SHAKESPEARE_SIS

Or, if nobody knows how Google does this - anybody know if is possible to disable its Add-in from another Add-in?