See the article I linked to. By default Alfred limits file search results to Applications, System Preferences, and Contacts. If you’re searching for another file type you need to use a search keyword like “open” or “find”.
I hear you. Alfred default is to launch app. For file searches, you need to type a space or ‘ before typing the file are to tell Alfred you are looking for a file.
It’s unfortunate that Alfred does not perform file search as it’s default behavior but I guess that’s probably by design. I wonder how often are users /potential customers confused by this.
Once you have the habit of always hitting space before a file search, searching for files in Alfred become second nature and you will appreciate what other things it can do that Spotlight can’t.
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Do people not read manuals anymore?
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I suspect that most people haven’t read manuals for decades.
Few apps even come with decent manuals anymore.
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https://www.alfredapp.com/help/guides-and-tutorials/
https://www.obdev.at/resources/launchbar/help/index.php
In the days when apps were still applications, I would always give users the documentation after I installed new software. Later when they had a problem and called me, I would tear the plastic off their manual(s) and try to help them.
Steve Jobs once famously said “People don’t read anymore”.
At least when it comes to manuals, IMO, they never did.
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I must need clinical help. I really like reading user manuals and bemoan the fact that some developers have abandoned them. (I’ve been very glad for the Take Control of series because a lot of those books—like the one for LaunchBar—really do make up for the absence of a manual.) The Scrivener manual is a particularly nice example of a useful reference book.
I also like reading English grammar handbooks, style guides, reference books, and the like.
The only manuals I don’t love are man pages. They are generally so poorly written that I’m often more confused after reading one (xargs (1)?). I read a man page and then Google for examples so I can understand what I just read. It reminds me of the line from Beetlejuice: “This thing reads like stereo instructions.” (In fairness, they do make perfect sense once you already know precisely how the function you wanted to use operates.)
…but I digress.
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I hear you. In graduate school (in the 90s), I was trying to set up a list of terms and definitions in Microsoft Word, with the term in one column and the definition right next to it in another column. Everything I tried resulted in newspaper-style columns, which was not what I wanted.
So I searched the help files, but nothing I could find on columns helped at all.
Finally — I don’t recall how — I figured out to use tables. But if I’d known a table was what I needed, I wouldn’t have needed to consult the help files in the first place. 
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I read them too, I am about the only person I know who does. My wife does too amazingly and did before we even met. Peas in a pod?
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Man pages are largely terrible. Back in the days of Usenet, I had a .sig file that said “If I understood the man page, I wouldn’t have asked the question.”
The best explanation for man pages is that they are written for people who already know how something works and just need a reminder. They aren’t for learning from scratch.
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No. It is the computer literate generation’s way 
Their preferred method is to jab randomly at the keyboard. Sadly for old timers like me it usually works for them. I think they acquired a kind of memory of what they jabbed at: it amazes me. Then, of course, there is always the ‘other solution’… That is ask the old timers they mostly hold in contempt. “oh THAT…duh!” is what you get in reply. “Yes that” I reply.
It seems there is a 1.8.1 update which changed how this workflow behave. It used to be I can type “emoji grin” and press enter and it will paste into the front most application. Now, pressing enter means it copies to the clipboard and I have to manually Cmd-V to paste it 
@Topre You don’t need a workflow - you can use the emoji snippet collection linked from https://www.alfredapp.com/extras/snippets/
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Alfred never cease to amaze me! Thanks for the tip but my muscle memory is just so used to that workflow now. Good to keep in mind.
It takes a while to be able to read man pages efficiently. As an old unix hacker, I’ve read about a million man pages so I can read (and re-read) them easily. But you’re right, some of them are pretty obtuse (xargs, I’m looking at you). Now, Info pages, on the other hand…
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Revisiting this eposide and this thread after several months… Have been a happy LaunchBar user, always keep interested in Alfred yet unpersuaded, as LaunchBar had fulfilled my needs so well. However, it seems LaunchBar has not been under active development for a while, which, while wouldn’t have been a major issue otherwise, is super annoying as Catalina is so hostile to third-party utilities that it has rendered a lot of LaunchBar’s built-in actions unfunctioning. The problem is Alfred doesn’t offer a trial period for their PowerPack, and I’m not sure whether I should take the time to get used to Alfred’s logic from the beginning.
Any suggestion from same-situated LaunchBar users?
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The free version of Alfred is powerful enough to determine if the Powerpack is worth the expense, and there are enough paying Alfred users to attest to its working as promised. So try out the free version.
I migrated from Launch at, used Alfred’s free version for a year, then upgraded. No complaints.
I used the free Alfred for almost one year before finally putting money for the PowerPack, which is to say, by default, Alfred is pretty feature rich.
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The app was definitely updated to address all the changes Catalina brought about. What actions are you finding not working in LaunchBar? I had some trouble spots during the beta, but post beta everything seems to be working as it once did. Message me directly if you want to see if any of the problems I had to solve would apply to you.
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Why not post a list here it might be useful. I changed to Alfred this week. I far prefer it after years on Launchbar. I found it glitchy now too, can’t put my finger on it. I was going back and relaunching it quite often I found. Some of that might well be bad habits though…