Windows-7-AIO-Sample-Chapter.pdf

Windows 7 All-in-One

For Dummies

Book 3/Chapter 3: Searching Your Computer

and

Book 8/Chapter 2: Using Device Stage

ISBN: 978-0-470-48763-1

Indianapolis, Indiana

Posted with Permission

Chapter 3: Searching

Your Computer

In This Chapter

Nailed it: Sorting through the search maze

Controlling indexes and indexing

Using Search settings

Saving and reusing searches

W ant to know my first reaction to Windows 7, after I played with the

interface for about five minutes?

Yesssss! Microsoft finally — finally — fixed Search.

I had to find a document on my home server, like, really fast. I tried using

Vista and just couldn’t locate the stupid thing. So I switched over to

Windows 7 and, in a matter of seconds, found the document.

Yesssss!

You may not be as easily impressed as I, but I’ve collected a bunch of

screen shots over the years showing Windows Vista missing searches —

simple searches that should’ve resulted in easy hits, passed over for some

unknown reason or possibly no reason.

I’ll never use Vista to search again. (I never did rely on Windows XP.) Search

alone is reason enough for me to upgrade to Windows 7. True fact.

Even so, searches don’t always go the way you probably expect. This chap-

ter explains how to use the Windows 7 search features in ways that don’t

leave you scratching your head (or other parts of your anatomy). First check

out the section “Searching Basics,” which provides tips to find which search

tools offer the best results. It also helps to know a little about what’s going

on under the hood — search quirks, which I translate into plain-English

advice for you. If you’re the tinkering sort, check out the section on twiddling

with the search index settings. (The index is the brain behind the Windows

search beast.) And last but not least, if you get lost searching for a must-have

file, flip to the section near the end of this chapter, “Finding Files That Got

Lost,” which walks you through the progressively powerful arsenal of search-

and-recovery tools available to you in the big, bad world of lost files.

270 Searching Basics

If you want to understand how Windows really performs searches, you have

to be able to see filename extensions — the short (usually three-letter) suffix

of each file’s name that identifies the file’s type, such as .doc and .jpg .

Windows 7 doesn’t show you filename extensions unless you specifically tell

it to. To make heads or tails out of anything in this chapter, make Windows

show you filename extensions by following the steps I outline in Book II,

Chapter 1.

Searching Basics

Maybe you need to find all the handouts you typed for your Porcine

Prevaricators seminar. Maybe you remember that you have a recipe with

tarragon in it but you can’t remember where in the world you put it. Maybe

you accidentally moved or deleted all the pictures of your trip to Cancun or

Windows Media Player suddenly can’t find your MP3s of the 1974 Grateful

Dead tour.

Good. You’re in the right place.

People generally go looking for files or folders on their computers for one of

two reasons. Perhaps they vaguely remember that they used to have some-

thing — maybe a Christmas letter, a product description, or a great joke —

and now they can’t remember where they put it. Or, they have been playing

around with Windows Explorer, and whatever they thought was sitting in

a specific place isn’t there any more. In either case, the solution is to make

Windows 7 do the work and go searching for your lost files or folders.

Engaging your brain before the search

All the search engines in the world can’t help until you have your act

together. You can save a lot of time and frustration by following these sug-

gestions:

Visualize exactly what you want. Don’t search for lightning if you’re

looking for lightning bug .

Know your tools. The Windows 7 search engine works in mysterious

ways, but you can increase your chances of finding what you want quickly

if you accommodate the foibles of Windows 7. This chapter can help.

Narrow the search ahead of time. You can easily create massive lists

of files that match specific search criteria. But if you’re looking for a file

where Woody is the author, why search for all files?

Stay flexible. If you keep typing the same search string, you keep receiv-

ing the same answers — guaranteed. Any idea how many different ways

you can spell Shakespeare — correctly?

Searching Basics

271

Use every trick in the book. This book, of course.

Remember the First Law of Searching. If you know where the file you desire

might be located, navigate to the folder before you start the search. For exam-

ple, if you know that the file you want is inside the \Documents\Invoices

folder, open that folder before you type the search argument (or arguments)

in the search bar.

Corollary I: If you’re searching for an e-mail message, search from inside

your e-mail program. That effectively restricts the scope of the search.

Corollary II: If you’re searching for a picture or video, use Windows Live

Photo Gallery (see Book IV, Chapter 5). For a song, use Windows Media

Player (or iTunes or Winamp or whichever player happens to ring your

chimes). For a video, use Windows Media Center. The tools there are

much better — aw, you get the idea.

Stepping through a basic search

Windows 7 packs Search boxes everywhere, most noticeably at the bottom

of the Start menu and in the upper-right corner of every Windows Explorer

window.

The example in this section focuses on searching from an Explorer window,

although you can use the Start menu box with the steps as well. Note, how-

ever, that the Start menu Search box has a few extra peculiarities worth

knowing. I explain them in the section “Searching from the Start menu,” later

in this chapter. Ahem.

Book III

Chapter 3

If you type something in a Search box, Windows 7 immediately runs to the

index, looking for matches in the current folder and all folders underneath

the current folder. It searches for all kinds of files — documents and text

files, of course, but also pictures and music, e-mail messages, and even the

contents of Web pages.

The result frequently reminds me of listening for a specific conversation in a

packed room — or in a mosh pit.

Here’s a simple example of a relatively tame search:

1. Choose Start Documents.

Windows Explorer opens your Documents library.

2. In the upper-right corner, where it says Search, type a word that

might appear inside your Documents library or one of the subfolders

of the folders in the library.

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: