Still, it’s a graphical operating system. The search options ought to be presented in the gui, rather than hidden on a web page.

On top of that, MS seems to want to eat my cake and eat theirs, too. By that, I mean that they want to make search this all powerful, intuitive engine, better at finding what you’re looking for.

To that end, they’ve abandoned the notion that the string is what the user is looking for. Okay, I’ll buy that. (I don’t like it, but I can understand.)

So, they have an indexing service. They have indexed and non-indexed locations. They give you the option of turning Windows 7 Search ON or OFF, for cripes sake.

Okay, whatever.

So, if it’s all smarter than the end user, if it’s such a powerful tool, why is the interface nothing more than an obscure text box?

If it’s so great, where’s the on-line (within the OS) documentation to help a user out?

It’s about as user friendly as searching from the command line in UNIX. It’s almost as thought they were going for that, to prove they had something for power users.

But I don’t know how that helps my grandma find her Backstreet Boys mp3s.

The trick appears to be to either wait for the indexing to complete entirely or to not index at all.

My testing: I wanted to find a backed up Firefox bookmark file, a .json extension. I knew which backup it was in, a backup of ~44K objects and ~39GB. Search did not find it. Unreal, I had just moved from Vista, which had allowed me to leave Google Desktop behind three years ago. [Side note: Unless you have magic, XP search is the one that is broken. Once I had Vista, search was a non-issue.]

I found the file manually to confirm that search should have found it. I checked indexing; it was not nearly done. I decided to test an idea. I paused indexing, deleted the volume on which I had been searching from the indexing list, and searched again.

Search returned quickly with what I had originally expected. It even returned it when I went to the top of the TB drive containing many backups of the size in which I had been searching. I pursued the thread. I indexed a small folder hierarchy, so that it would complete quickly, down the tree from where I was searching and that contained the file for which I had been looking. Search again, and more quickly, found the item.

I added one more twist. I created an unknown extension and found it both with and without an index present.

Conclusions: Windows 7 search works fine. Either index, and wait for it to complete (and it is not speedy for some reason), or do not index at all. Windows 7 (power of four, right?) and decent drives will come back soon enough without an index. Apparently, registering file types with the indexing service is not that big of a deal.

I want to find the hack that let’s me populate all of the “meta:” searches in the drop down in the search frame. I only see “Date Modified:” and “Size:” Thanks to Paul Foty for the list of the tags and the links from others.

Hopefully this detour from what I should really be doing will help somebody.

All I wanted to do was search for .log files without dropping to a command line and typing “dir *.log /s”
How hard could they have made this for me?!

In the help was a link to the site that finally gave the answers:

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

So, I used “ext:log” in the search box and finally got what I want….

In the previous versions of windows, I used to right click on a folder to be able to search it. Now it’s gone, wtf!! It’s was so simple and logical.

now its a pain

To help with the recording process of some of the search strings everyone should post what they currently have found.

datemodified:
size:
contents:
folder:
type:
ext: (.jpg, .doc, .avi, etc.)
datetaken:
tags:
name:
author:
kind: (document, music, email, im, meeting, docs, notes, tasks, videos, programs, link, etc.)
from:
before: (date)
after: (date)
lastsavedby: (username)
comments:
datelastprinted:

Music specific search keywords
bitrate:
artist:
album:
genre:
lyrics:
track:
year:

Picture specific search keywords
cameramake:
cameramodel:
dimensions:
orientation:
width:
height:
flashmode:
taken:

Searching for all files modified today.

A search of the following path (no search string, datemodified:‎1/‎28/‎2010) reveals just two results (both files in the root folder of the search), and search has apparently completed searching.
C:\Users\MyName\

Yet, when I search the following path (no search string, datemodified:‎1/‎28/‎2010), I get hundreds of results (files/folders distributed throughout that tree):
C:\Users\MyName\AppData\

The folder I was looking for was:
C:\Users\MyName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

Apparently, this is considered a Protected Operating System File, and not just a hidden file. Setting my Folder Options to not hide Protected Operating System Files allowed it to appear in Search Results.

Very odd, that.

After all, I was able to view and manipulate that directory in Windows Explorer, without issue at all. As such, it seemed to be the case that it should appear in Search Results. At least, that is what I am accustomed to.

I had my Folder Options set to show Hidden Files, Folders, or Drives.
I had my Folder Options set to Hide Protected Operating System Files.

I was able to see:
C:\Users\MyName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu

Thus, I (apparently incorrectly) concluded that this location was not considered “Protected Operating System Files”.

This location was not returned in Search results.

In Folder Options, I then elected not to hide Protected Operating System Files.

This location can now be found in Search results.

But it doesn’t replace old Windows Search.

Case in point. I’m tooling around my new OS, Windows 7, this morning. I am not quite familiar with all the paths.

This morning, I wish to remove a program shortcut from the main Start Menu and place it into my own Start Menu. (When installing the program, there was no option to install program or shortcut for only current user.)

(I realize there’s likely a more elegant solution available for this task, but I haven’t found it yet.)

I know shortcuts have been placed in this Start Menu:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Now, where is my own start menu?

I am accustomed to being able to search for unique strings in file/folder NAMES to find the files/folders I am looking for.

In Windows 2000 and Windows XP, I could go to
C:\Documents and Settings\MyName\ and then hit F3 to open Search. (If in XP, I’d then elect to search files and folders.) I’d use START as my string, start the search, and soon see my own Start Menu among the search results. Very simple.

Using AstroGrep to search for the string START within C:\Users\MyName\, I get a bajillion results. (They are not counted.) The results seem to include every document within that tree which contains the string START. But not the DIRECTORY I am looking for. Not unexpected. It’s grep, after all. That’s what it does. If you’re looking for a directory in Unix, you use FIND or LOCATE, iirc. Cannot find any option to set AstroGrep to search ONLY file/folder names.

Using Windows 7 Search to search for the string START within C:\Users\MyName\, I get 1409 results. The results seem to include every FILE within that tree which contains the string START. But not the FOLDER I am looking for. (There ARE folders within the results set, as well. Just not the one I am looking for.) Completely unacceptable. Were I not certain the directory was contained within the tree, I might incorrectly assume it is not there, due to its being missing from my results.

I wish to use the shell search to search for FILES and FOLDERS by NAME.

Why is that so alien a concept to the developers?

Searching WITHIN files should be an AVAILABLE OPTION, but not the default.

C:\Users\MyName\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu