Windows XP Hacks

Find Files Faster by Mastering the Indexing Service’s Query Language

Got a hard disk filled with many files, and no easy way to find what you want quickly? Use the Indexing Service and its query language to get what you want fast.

Packrats like me (and my editor) have a hard time finding exactly what they want on their hard disk. I have thousands of files there, some dating back close to ten years, that I dutifully copy to a new system every time I upgrade my hardware. After all, who knows when I might need to find the list of books I planned to take out of the library in 1986?

XP’s Search Companion is too slow and the kinds of searches it can perform are fairly limited. It can’t find files based on properties such as when the file was last printed or the word count of a file, or using a sophisticated search language.

The Indexing Service, first used with the Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), is a far more powerful tool. It can perform searches hundreds of times faster and includes an exceedingly sophisticated query language you can use for performing searches. It works by indexing the files on your disk, and then, when you do a search, it queries that index rather than searching through your entire hard disk. The indexes that the service creates are called catalogs.

By default, the Indexing Service is turned off. To activate it, first run the Search Companion by choosing Start → Search[ → For Files or Folders]. From the Search Companion, choose Change Preferences ...