How to Search files in Vista

[James Ivey]

I must be doing something wrong, cuz the Vista file Search doesn't find
diddly squat.

What happened to the helpful, handy Search Assistant?

I can't seem to figure out how to search the "contents" of the files.

I search a directory on laptop/Vista for something I know is there, and it
comes up with nothing. Walk over to my desktop/XP, and boom, there it is.

Help?

James

 

[Ringmaster]

I must be doing something wrong, cuz the Vista file Search doesn't find
diddly squat.

What happened to the helpful, handy Search Assistant?

Microsoft CHANGED how Search works. While it can be slow and clumsy it
does work. Most people don't understand that by default Vista excludes
most of your computer and NEVER looks outside a small area UNLESS you
tell it to.

I can't seem to figure out how to search the "contents" of the files.

TELL Vista to do that. Be sure. Open Windows Explorer.

1. Tools, folder options.

2. Go to Search tab. Under WHAT to search make appropriate choices.

3. CRITICAL: When using advance search be sure you also check
what the field 'location' is set to. Should be Everywhere or
Computer UNLESS you are certain what you are looking for is for
sure on some hard drive or in some folder in which case you can
limit it to those areas.

4. Check non-indexed locations. For repeated system wide searches you
may wish to modify which drives and folders are automatically
indexed. The more you do that the slower any search will be.

The smart way is put ALL you data you'll ever search under ONE master
folder on some non system drive than build as many sub folders as
necessary for your needs then Vista will automatically only look in
this one place. The result will be all areas you files COULD BE in
will always be searched and you'll exclude areas on your computer they
never would be like in the Windows folder.

I know this method works. I have in excess of a million data files and
don't have trouble finding anything. Looking inside files however can
be a painfully slow process IF you don't limit where you're searching.
So doing a system wide search on a computer with many TB's of files
can take an hour or more to just complete one search. That's because
Vista need to open and search through so many files. Vista can confuse
you in that the progress bar at the top will make many, many passes
from full left to right building the results with some pauses so you
need to wait, not assume Vista is finished when likely it isn't.

 

[Paul Montgumdrop]

I followed your instructions but still couldn't find out how to find a
word or string of text contained in a file (but NOT in the title), or
how to find a file modified in a specific period, e.g. Jan to March
2007. Can you help, please.

Fat Doris, you can use the Advanced Search by using the Windows-key and
F-Key combination to get to ADV search. You can then use the Alt-key to
pull up the configuration menu.

You can go to the Tool menu. You can go to Folder Options, Search tab
and select "Always search file names and content. Then Vista search will
look for file content in files, even from the Search box of off the
Start button or when you do the search from Explore.

You can also set this by going to Control Panel and to the Folder
Options and to the Search tab.

If you're at Folder Options off of Control Panel, then you might want to
goto the View tab and check-mark on "Always show menus" so that the menu
is present when you go to Explore or to the Advanced Search.

 

[Retroman]

Thank you. This tells me how to search in file names and content, but
not in content alone which is what I want to do. Is there a way to do
this?

Easy. Lets say you want to find files that contain the string "Ray" but you want to
exclude file names with that string. Type

Ray NOT filename:Ray

The operator must be upper case.

Doug M. in NJ

 

[Ringmaster]

Thanks, but that's double dutch to me. What I'm looking for is the box
you fill in with title, content, file type, period from-to, etc. Or
failing that, is there an easy way to search for content but exclude
file name, and for created/saved or whatever within a given period?

Thank you.

OK, first grab a cup of coffee or your favorite beverage. Comfortable?
The syntax necessary to do advanced searching can be a little
confusing. You need to learn two things. First is a simple algebraic
concept conceived by George Boole, a 19th century English
mathematician. The good news is once you learn how you can apply it to
how Windows generally searches and well as doing much more powerful
searches using Google and other web based Search Engines.

Why would you want to? Because if you want to restrict how Search
works you need to understand the concept of Basic Boolean Search
Operators called AND, OR and NOT.

In a nut shell AND OR and NOT (always use caps) are connectors or more
accurately serve to modify what gets returned when you search for
something.

For Windows advanced searching you also need to understand how
Advanced Query Syntax works. Combining Boolean Search Operators with
defined properties should give the results you want or at least help
limit the clutter you don't want.

I know, still sounds like pig Latin. So a couple examples:

Say you want to find a word in a document, but ignore the files that
might have the same name in their title. That's a job for the NOT
operator plus a property called filename. The operator defines what to
look for on the left side of the equation and what not to return on
the right side.

So apples NOT filename:apples should return a list of everything that
has the word apples (as in your documents) while ignoring any file
names where the word apples is part of the file name.

For a full list of properties that Windows understands, see:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx

The operators AND and OR work in similar way. To search for both the
words Bob and Bill at the same time you would use the AND operator.
To find Bob or Bill use the OR operator.

That explains WHAT to look for. You also need to specify WHERE to
look. By default Vista only looks in locations it by default indexes.
If you want to expand that to look on all your hard drives you need to
expand advance searches to change location to computer or everywhere
and also check look in non indexed locations.

 

[Ringmaster]

Thanks, that's helpful. Can you also tell me how to limit the search to
files created say between 1 Jan 2007 and 5 June 2008?
Yours hopefully
Fat Doris

Read my longer reply, then look on the web site offered to see how to
also use the less than < and greater than > modifiers. That will allow
you to limit searching to date range.

 

[Retroman]

Thanks, that's helpful. Can you also tell me how to limit the search to
files created say between 1 Jan 2007 and 5 June 2008?
Yours hopefully
Fat Doris

You're welcome. You can restrict results to a date range like this:

date:>=1/1/07<=5/6/08

In my earlier example, I should have excluded folders and images. Putting it all
together would make something like this:

Ray NOT filename:Ray NOT kind:folders NOT kindictures date:>=1/1/07<=5/6/08

I save long queries like this in a text file for easy editing and reuse. The Save
Search button also works, but the resulting .search-ms file format (XML) is difficult
to edit.

Search syntax is shown in the Vista help screen "Tips for finding
files". Additional details are found in the WDS 4 query guide:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/desktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx

Doug M. in NJ

 

[Paul Montgumdrop]

Thanks you. This tells me how to search in file names and content, but
not in content alone which is what I want to do. Is there a way to do
this?

It's a combined search. It's going to search for a file by name and
data/content in a file based on the criteria you have entered in the
search box.

If the data you are entering just happens to be part of a file name then
it's going to show along with a file that contains the data/content of
the file that matches the search criteria.

However, it might be that if you enter the Boolean operators like AND,
OR, EQUAL, NOT in the criteria that you are using to look for things, it
may refine your search to only looking at file content.

I don't know that for sure, but you can look this information up
yourself on the Search by using Google, as there are for sure plenty
articles out there on the how-to(s) of using the Vista search.

 

[Paul Montgumdrop]

Thanks, that's helpful. Can you also tell me how to limit the search to
files created say between 1 Jan 2007 and 5 June 2008?
Yours hopefully
Fat Doris

Fat Doris, this information is out there in articles if you use Google
to search for the information, like "How to do file date range search
Vista Search". It's going to comeback with some articles I bet.

Why don't you try it and see what happens in pulling some information
for you?

 

[+Bob+]

I followed your instructions but still couldn't find out how to find a
word or string of text contained in a file (but NOT in the title), or
how to find a file modified in a specific period, e.g. Jan to March
2007. Can you help, please.

Stop your pain and increase your performance:

Google for "Agent Ransack". Then shut off indexing on your system and
rename searchindexer.exe to something like POSsearchindexer.exe.

There, that feels better!

 

[+Bob+]

Fat Doris, this information is out there in articles if you use Google
to search for the information, like "How to do file date range search
Vista Search". It's going to comeback with some articles I bet.

Why don't you try it and see what happens in pulling some information
for you?

Yes, excellent choice! Go out and google for instructions on how to do
something in Vista that took 3 seconds to figure out intuitively in
Windows 2000!

These feature enhancements from MS are incredible!

 

[Paul Montgumdrop]

<snipped>

Look Bobby boy, you shot your wad the last couple weeks on this, don't
get into my face again and stop stalking you nut. I don't care what you
think, and I do not want to be bothered with you.

You got some real mental issue trying to express your opinions to
someone who absolutely does not care what you're talking about, and
that's on anything you may be trying to talk about too.

I don't care what it is that I may be trying to help a poster on. I
don't want to see you, period, even Ringmaster Albright has this much sense.

You are worse than that lunatic Albright. You don't like the search
then, find, you don't like it, but you don't keep tossing it up in my
face, because you do not mean anything to me, other than, I consider
that there is something wrong with you. You have mental issues. I guess
this is what starts happening to people when they start getting old and
cantankerous.

You tossed out to someone about being a man. You need to do the same in
being a man when someone is flat-out telling you to get away from he or
she.

 

[Paul Montgomery]

Look Bobby boy, you shot your wad the last couple weeks on this, don't
get into my face again and stop stalking you nut. I don't care what you
think, and I do not want to be bothered with you.

"into my face"

"stalking"

"I don't care what you think"

The loon sounds like a broken record.

 

[Ringmaster]

<snipped>

Look Bobby boy, you shot your wad the last couple weeks on this, don't
get into my face again and stop stalking you nut. I don't care what you
think, and I do not want to be bothered with you.

You got some real mental issue trying to express your opinions to
someone who absolutely does not care what you're talking about, and
that's on anything you may be trying to talk about too.

I don't care what it is that I may be trying to help a poster on. I
don't want to see you, period, even Ringmaster Albright has this much sense.

You are worse than that lunatic Albright. You don't like the search
then, find, you don't like it, but you don't keep tossing it up in my
face, because you do not mean anything to me, other than, I consider
that there is something wrong with you. You have mental issues. I guess
this is what starts happening to people when they start getting old and
cantankerous.

Hey jackass, the only different between you and Montgumdrop is how you
spell the last name. Make a note of it.

BTW it's fine, not find. <snicker>

You fools are all alike. All the fanboys clowns get pissed-off because
they can't stand how easily I make them all dance and end up looking
stupid by hanging them with their own words.

 

[Paul Montgumdrop]

Paul Montgomery wrote:

<snipped>

I see Montgumdrop is still stalking, the old master lunatic stalker. I
saw him making a post, giving out a NG ticket to someone, flashing his
old dusty NG sheriff badge and telling someone what he or she should do
or not do.

I didn't say anything to the old man, and the poster he posted to didn't
post back because the poster knew, like I knew, that he or she was
facing a real nut-case.

He is already a (Geritol drunk) chasing old *clown*. I didn't say
anything to him as I don't need him chasing anymore than he is already
chasing with his nose wide open.

It's kind of sad that the old man has nothing in his life but Usenet.
It's sad that Montgumdrop is out here on Usenet it seems 18 to 20 hours
a day 7 days a week. But when you get old like he is old, you start
sleeping less and less and someone like old man Montgumdrop materializes.

 

[Paul Montgumdrop]

Ringmaster wrote:

<snipped>

Oh no, it's the king of lunacy that has shown, Ringmaster Adam
Albirght. He is older than -bob-, but he is not as old as Montgumdrop.

Three old fools that hang out on Usenet, read every post that's made in
a NG in a day, because they are hooked on Usenet, and they have nothing
else to do in their, otherwise, worthless over the hill, it's straight
down the hill for them, lives.

It's kind of sad.

 

[Ringmaster]

Ringmaster wrote:

<snipped>

Oh no, it's the king of lunacy that has shown, Ringmaster Adam
Albirght. He is older than -bob-, but he is not as old as Montgumdrop.

Three old fools that hang out on Usenet, read every post that's made in
a NG in a day, because they are hooked on Usenet, and they have nothing
else to do in their, otherwise, worthless over the hill, it's straight
down the hill for them, lives.

It's kind of sad.

What's really sad is the same jackass posting from:

dialup-4.225.25.234.dial1.cincinnati1.level3.net 4.225.25.234

thinks he's fooling everybody and that we don't who it is.

 

[Frank]

What's really sad is the same jackass posting from:

dialup-4.225.25.234.dial1.cincinnati1.level3.net 4.225.25.234

thinks he's fooling everybody and that we don't who it is.

You actually think you can read a header <chuckle>!

 

[Paul Montgumdrop]

Ringmaster wrote:

<snipped>

Old fool will go away? I am not even reading your crap.

 

[Paul Montgumdrop]

You actually think you can read a header <chuckle>!

Oh, that old fool is back on headers again, like it means anything to me.

What good has it done for this old *clown* over the months that this old
fool chases headers?

That's about the only thing he can really do is chase headers and chase
you.

He is pretty much worthless doing anything else.