Windows® 7 All-in-One for Dummies®

Chapter III.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

Want to know my first reaction to Windows 7, after I played with the interface for about five minutes?

Yesssss! Microsoft finally — finally — fixed Search.

Note

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 chapter 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. ...