The documents are all text messages. I would assume Vista has these
It has nothing to do with the file type, rather telling Vista how
extensively to look and also WHERE to look. One reason a lot of people
have trouble using Vista Search is the interface is poorly designed
and confusing at least until you use it several times.
For extensive searching it is best to begin at either the hard drive
or folder level if you know what you're looking for is located there.
If you don't know where the documents are assuming they are scattered
all over your machine then start at the folder named 'computer', which
should force Vista to look "everywhere" however doing this the time
involved may be extremely long and Vista does NOT give accurate
feedback when or if it is finished and it is easy to assume it has
finished when it hasn't, because just because you no longer hear your
hard drives clicking away doesn't mean the search is done, so just be
patient.
Note: Following assumes you are starting an advanced search from
Windows Explorer AND also want to search WITHIN files.
I just tried an experiment. I have many documents with the word
'market' both in the title and in the contents of text files,
spreadsheets, etc., since I'm into online trading and have a E-Trade
brokerage account. I just created a new Word document then saved it in
a new folder with that word appearing several times within the body of
the document as well as it being in the file name.
Normally I don't do 'within file' searching, having little need for
it. If you need that ability you first need to click on Windows
Explorer, Tools, then Folder Options, then the Search tab and finally
check 'always search file names and contents'.
Now lets see what happens.
I just wanted to see how long it would take so I started at the
computer folder and typed in the word 'market' in the box at the
extreme top right of Windows Explorer. Vista began to churn away
instantly
If you keep your eyes in the left pane of Windows Explorer you'll see
a new folder named wherever you start searching or in this experiment
'search results in computer' got added. Within a minute Vista found
it's first hit, a HTML link. Over time it added several more hits. It
wasn't until six minutes later that it found the test document I just
created, and still it was nearly finished. Just because you may no
longer hear your hard drives clicking away doesn't mean Vista is done
looking, so don't be fooled. Neither does the status bar at the top of
Windows Explorer reaching all the way to the right indicate it is done
searching either. It will restart and go back to the left and go to
the right many times thus giving you a false signal as to how far
along it is in it's searching just like it does when moving files. The
bottom line is, you have no idea how many times this cycle will
repeat.
It is now 24 minutes later. Vista has found 87 files that either have
the word 'market' in the file name or somewhere in the contents of
text documents, spreadsheets and so on. The search list is clickable
and you can go to each file directly from the search results. You may
be surprised to see files you didn't create like various log files if
the search word or phase appears in them.
There are several glaring things wrong with how Vista searches. First
Microsoft makes the absurd assumption most of you will faithfully
store all your documents under the special folders set aside for this
purpose. What's wrong with that is that you would willing put all your
documents in the root drive, which if you have more than one hard
drive is unlikely.
I, like most experienced users have my files spread across multiple
hard drives in many specialized folders because for one thing putting
them where Microsoft expects would quickly eat up all the free space
in the root drive which is already bloated by Windows itself, shadow
files, restore points and other clutter. So a dumb idea to keep your
documents anywhere in you C drive if you have multiple drives or
partitions and we didn't even discuss Vista's intense dislike relative
to permissions and file ownership if you store files in what it
foolishly claims is it's hard drive.
As a option you can tell Vista to include any folders you've made for
storage of your data in it's indexing scheme. The downsize is your
hard drives will churn like crazy daily as Vista constantly tries to
keep the index up to date. The likely result is your hard drives will
die faster. Not a good option in my opinion, besides it eats up huge
amounts of resources and really can slow down your PC. So generally
having indexing running by default is a dumb idea unless you restrict
WHAT folder you index.
My suggestion, if you need to search INSIDE files to find words or
phrases set up a special folder(s) where you keep all your documents
and make sub folders as required to make it easier to find what you're
looking for. Now tell Vista to INDEX this folder. If you set Windows
Explorer to always look inside folders and you faithfully put all the
documents you ever will need to search in in one place then the search
results can be much faster.
For me, since I do mostly video work and have in excess of a million
files it would be crazy to put all that in the set aside folders
Microsoft wants you to use and automatically scans in searches.
The key to good searching and reasonably fast results in store
EVERYTHING you'll need to search for in one place (ie some master
folder, sub divided as you personal needs require, have Vista index
THIS folder, but do not keep in on you C drive!
