BlockSearch: Making Large Files Usable

As competitive debate has transformed from physical to digital, debaters gained access to an enormous volume of evidence. This isn't only a matter of abundant open source and email chain sharing; teams that debated on paper were literally limited by the physical size of evidence that can be carried to tournaments. The best college teams made do with about 10 tubs (~150,000 pages [1]) of evidence. Today, digital storage has exploded these limits—my decade in debate has generated over 54 GB (approximately 2.7 million pages [2]) of evidence.

This volume revolution brings challenges alongside benefits. Judges now expect greater specificity in arguments, while debaters struggle with massive files that load slowly and interrupt prep time. Traditional organizational systems like alphabetical filing break down when trying to quickly locate specific evidence—is Arctic Biodiversity under "A" for Arctic, or "E" for Environment? Precious seconds are wasted.

In short, the evolution that liberated us from physical constraints has created new organizational challenges. To manage them, we need something new: search for our blocks.

This post will teach you how to use a piece of software that does just that, helping you organize information. I've shared a few utilities that only marginally streamline debate prep. This is not that. Mastering this tool has the potential to save you minutes of in-round or pre-round prep at a time, putting otherwise difficult-to-reach evidence at your fingertips.

You can download it at this link. You can also find a public Github repository with the Windows version's source code here, and the Mac version's here.

Use the BlockSearch .exe if you're on windows, and the .dmg if you're on MacOS. If you would like to test out the functionality before setting up your own files, I have included a small sample index for you to experiment with. I will add a demonstration video walking you through how to use the program to this page shortly.

If you'd prefer a video walkthrough, you can watch the video below:

Setting Up Block Search

Before you can effectively use Block Search, you'll need to set up the application and prepare your evidence files by breaking them down into searchable components.

Windows

Installation:

1. Download and run the application: You may need to give the application custom approval for antivirus, much like with Verbatim itself.
2. Configuration: When you first start BlockSearch, you'll need to tell it where to look for your documents:
   1. Go to Search Settings → Select Search Folder
   2. Choose the folder where you plan to store your blocks
   3. The application will index all the documents in this folder and its subfolders. Note that you won't see anything yet - we still need to create the index.

Creating Your Block Index:

1. Navigate to Index → Add Files to Index
2. In the document splitter dialog:
   • Select Input Document: Choose your large Word file (like an impact defense file)
   • Choose Template Document: Select a blank Verbatim document to ensure styles are preserved
   • Select Heading Level: Choose which heading level to split at:
     • Heading 1 targets Pockets
     • Heading 2 targets Hats
     • Heading 3 targets Blocks (most commonly useful)
     • Heading 4 targets Tags
   • Choose Output Options:
     • Create ZIP archive: Bundle all documents together (useful for sharing)
     • Preserve hierarchy: Maintain folder structure based on heading levels (useful for filtering your search results later on, but will take slightly longer)
   • Select Output Location: Choose where to save your split documents. The output location should be within the Search Folder you chose above.
3. Batch Processing: You can add multiple documents to the queue and process them all at once:
   • Click "Add to Queue" for each document you want to process
   • Configure settings for each document individually
   • Click "Process Queue" to start splitting all queued documents
   • Monitor progress in the queue tab

Setting Up Prefixes:

Prefixes allow you to quickly limit your searches to specific folders. This is extremely useful for organizing different types of arguments:

1. Go to Search Settings → Prefix Configuration → Manage Prefixes
2. Create prefixes for different folders:
   • Enter a prefix (e.g., "cb" for conditionality bad, "k" for kritik answers, "d" for defense)
   • Click "Select Folder" to choose a folder to associate with that prefix
   • You can add multiple folders to the same prefix
3. Folder Exclusion: You can exclude certain folders from general searches:
   • In the prefix manager dialog, use the "Exclude from General" checkboxes
   • Excluded folders will only appear in search results when using their associated prefix
   • This helps keep your search results focused and relevant. For instance, you might check this box if you only want search results from your impact defense files when you are looking for them specifically.
4. Click "OK" to save your prefix configuration

Troubleshooting:

1. If your software isn't launching, you may need to flag it as legitimate for your antivirus. The instructions for doing this are the same as the instructions for approving Verbatim, which you can find here.
2. If you are getting outdated search results, you can force your index to update by reselecting your Search Folder.

macOS

The macOS version is slightly more complicated—in addition to the above steps, you will need to convert your word documents to JSON format:

1. Install the application: Download Block Search and drag it to your Applications folder.
2. Use the Document Splitter:
   • Go to Document Tools → Split Documents by Headings
   • Select Input Document: Choose your large Word file (like an impact defense file)
   • Choose Template Document: Select a blank Verbatim document to ensure styles are preserved. You can make your own blank document to preserve your custom styles, or download the template doc from the Dropbox link above.
   • Select Heading Level: Choose which heading level to split at. This will create a separate document out of each heading in your source document.
     • Heading 1 will target Pockets
     • Heading 2 will target Hats
     • Heading 3 will target Blocks (most likely to be useful)
     • Heading 4 will target Tags
   • Choose Output Options: Either create individual files or a ZIP archive—useful if you want to share your index with others
   • Select Output Location: Choose where to save your split documents
   • Process Document: Click to start splitting
3. Convert Your Documents to JSON:
   • Go to Document Tools → Convert Documents to JSON
   • In the converter dialog:
     • Select Input Folder: Choose the folder containing your Word documents. If you just used the document splitter, select the folder that contains the splitter’s output.
     • Select Output Folder: Choose where to save the converted JSON files
     • Select Template Document: Select a blank Verbatim document to ensure styles are preserved. You can make your own blank document to preserve your custom styles, or download the template doc from the Dropbox link above.
     • Click "Convert" to process your documents
4. Configure Your Search Folder:
   • Go to File → Browse Directory
   • Select the folder containing your converted JSON files
   • Block Search will use this folder as its index
5. Troubleshooting:
   1. If you see a message that MacOS cannot confirm your program is virus free, this is because I have not submitted the program for Apple Certification. You can greenlight the software by going to System Settings → Privacy and Security → scroll down to the bottom, and you will see an option to let BlockSearch “Open Anyway.” You can find Apple's instructions for this process here.
   2. If everything works except for the Doc Splitter, you are likely running the app on an account without administrative privileges.
   3. The program may request some permissions when it opens. These are necessary for the program to interact with Microsoft Word.

Using Block Search During Rounds

Now that your files are prepared and Block Search is configured, here's how to use it during speech preparation:

1. Activate Block Search: On Windows, you can press Ctrl+Space (or your custom shortcut). This will bring the app to the foreground and put your cursor in the search field. On Mac, simply select BlockSearch on your dock to bring it into focus. You can use Ctrl+Shift+Space or Command+F to put your cursor in the Search field.
2. Select Target: On Windows, click Send to Open Doc to see a list of your open word documents. On Mac, use the drop-down menu in the bottom right corner. Choose your speech doc. If you don’t see your speech doc in the list, you may need to hit refresh. You will only have to do this once; just like Verbatim speech docs, the target will stay selected until you change or close it.
   1. On Windows, you have access to advanced navigation tools. Press Shift+Enter when a search result is selected to preview its contents. Press the left arrow key to see your search result in the context of the original file it came from.
3. Select and Insert: Press Enter or click a result to send it to your target!
   1. On Windows, you can choose whether you want to send text to your cursor or the end of the document by default. To toggle between these defaults, use Ctrl+P. To send text to the alternative destination without changing the default, use Ctrl+Enter.

Tips

• Descriptive Headings: Since you'll be searching for blocks later, use descriptive heading names with keywords you're likely to search for.
• Consistent Formatting: Maintain consistent formatting and styles in your documents to ensure proper splitting and display.
• Regular Updates: Refresh your document index periodically, especially after making significant changes to your files or before tournaments.
• Folder Structure: Organize your blocks in a logical folder structure that maps to your prefix system.
• Template Document: Create a template document with your preferred styles to ensure consistency when splitting documents.

Conclusion

By thoughtfully preparing your files and configuring Block Search, you transform the research access bottleneck into a streamlined system that can pull up precisely the evidence you need in seconds. If you prepare it well, this approach fundamentally changes how debaters interact with their research during preparation time. Rather than navigating through massive files or maintaining multiple documents, you can focus entirely on strategy while Block Search handles the mechanical task of locating and transferring evidence. The initial investment in setting up your files will pay enormous dividends in every round you debate later on.

Works Cited

[1] (25 US Gallons volume of tub / 3.06438097 liters volume of ream of printer paper) * 500 sheets per ream

[2] https://cloudnine.com/ediscoverydaily/electronic-discovery/ediscovery-best-practices-perspective-on-the-amount-of-data-contained-in-1-gigabyte/#:~:text=A