How to find files inside ZIP files or emails

Sometimes, important photos, documents etc. lie hidden inside “compound” ZIP, 7z, PST, MBOX, ISO or gzip files. Often, we don’t even know that a file we’re looking for is embedded inside something else! For example, when we download multiple files from Google Drive, we get a single ZIP file. Files aren’t the only “compound” types – emails can also contain embedded attachments. Older files and photos are especially likely to have been emailed around rather than shared via cloud storage providers.

We often remember something about the file we’re looking for but nothing about the compound file/email which contains it. Since we can’t directly search using the embedded file’s properties, we struggle to find it. For example, many of my kids’ photos are in emails I’ve forwarded multiple times from one account to another. How can I find them if I don’t remember the email subjects or dates?
 

Search embedded files with the Datamaton Digital Manager

All of Datamaton’s products can index content embedded inside other content! This means you have to do absolutely nothing special to search for embedded file, emails, appointments etc. Just search based on whatever you remember, and the search results will automatically indclude embedded content.

For example, Knit will automatically index photos & videos insize ZIP, PST and MBOX files and inside emails as attachments. This includes performing AI based face detection and recognition on them. Thus, to find my kids’ photos, I can just search based on the face name, camera make/model or a range of dates when the picture was taken. Knit will automatically report matching embedded photos – I don’t need to remember the date, name or subject of the compound ZIP file/email within which they reside.

If you know the file you are looking for is embedded, you can explicitly tell Knit to only search embedded files. You do that by specifying the “Attribute Includes Embedded” search condition as shown below.

This searche will only return files that are embedded inside something else. This is useful if issuing a search just based on the face names or date range would return too much content and you want to narrow your search.