How does Windows Search work?

Factual Questions
1

It used to be that if I was in Windows Explorer or My Computer, and I pressed the Search button on the top, I would get a great box with options like “All or part of the file name” and “A word or phrase in the file”. That would allow me to easily find what I’m looking for, although I admit that it takes a long time to look through the whole folder.

That all changed recently, possibly when I upgraded to IE7. Now, it gives me a box called “Windows Search” and a bunch of really confusing options.

At the top, there’s a box where I suppose I can type stuff, and then a button labeled “Desktop”, so I guess if I press that button, it will search the desktop for what I’m looking for. But very rarely do I want to search the desktop. I usually want to look in some other folder. So let’s see what’s on the rest of the screen:

There’s a box called “From:”. That makes sense for email, but then I’d be searching in Outlook, if I used Outlook. There’s no way this can be looking at my Yahoo email. And the next box says “Author:”. I suppose that relates to my Word documents, of which I am the author. None of this makes sense to me. And even if I understood how these options work, there’s no “Go” or “Search” button! How does this screen work?

Fortunately, at the very bottom, there is a note which says “Click here to use Search Companion”. If I click there (and I always do), it brings me to the good old familiar search which I like.

I was going to ask how to disable the Windows Search, so that Search Companion is my default, and I don’t have to click on it. (And if anyone wants to tell me how, that would be appreciated.) But I suspect that if I do that, I will end up with slow searches, missing out on the new “Indexing” stuff.

So instead, I guess my main question is this: Where can I find a tutorial which will show me how to use this new Windows Search? To me it is extremely counter-intuitive, but the fact that I have not found any tutorials – nor have I even found complaints about it! – makes me suspect that there is some point which everyone else figured out, but I am totally clueless on. What am I doing wrong?

2

Seeing as you’ve already described what it seems like it is supposed to do, “counter intuitive” doesn’t seem like the best descriptor. More likely it’s just not “what I’m used to.”

The main thing to know is that it indexes certain segments of your hard drive like Google indexes the internet, so that it can do instantaneous searches. But it only indexes part of your hard drive. Your home folder is almost definitely indexed, so anything you think you might want to find eventually should probably be put there because searching for it will be easy.

But so when you search, just do the default, top box and it should instantaneously tell you whether it found that. Putting in a file name or random text, either should work just fine. Only if you didn’t find anything do you want to do the old search. That one is going to do a file by file, non-indexed search which will take a while.

3

Thanks, Sage Rat. I tried playing with it a bit, and indeed it works extremely fast, but I’d still like a tutorial.

For example, one aspect which I was clueless about, but registers a clear “d’oh!” on the Intuitiveness scale, is this: the word “Desktop” no longer means “the files and folders and shortcuts that I can see if no programs are running”, but instead, it suddenly means “the computer under my desk”, as opposed to the rest of the network or internet.

Regarding the other options: How does the “Date” field work? I can easily enter any one date, but it won’t let me put a range in. How does “Size” work? There seem to be only four options, “Huge” being “more than 5 mb”. Is there a way to look for files only larger than 50 mb?

4

Windows Search Advanced Query Syntax

5

Thank you, Reply!

That is perfect! Now what we need is for it to pop up when we click there on Help!