PingBack from http://itsvista.com/2007/05/microsoft-offers-tips-on-searching-in-vista/

Bah!  The more I use Vista, the more I find stuff I don't like about it.  Read this article and thought I'd give it a go, so went to "start\username\searches" thinking I could add a saved search from there.  WRONG!  You HAVE TO go "start\search\Save Search".  ARGH!

And network places?  Don't even get me started on THAT!!!

In terms of intuitive ways to do a task, I think XP is better than Vista.

Nick, is there any chance some aspects of the GUI (see above) will be reviewed during Vista's life span?

Search in Vista REAKS!  I've tried to use it time and time again, but I inevitably end up opening a command shell(**) and doing a DIR /S /b <mask>  because vista seems to be clinically INCAPABLE of just searching filenames any longer.

I have ZERO use for search folders because you first have TO SEARCH FOR THE FRIGGIN SAVED SEARCHS!!!!

Frankly, whoever did the usability testing on this one totally blew it.

(**) When I open a command shell, I don't use the new "built in" menu option either, because there are MANY situations where it also fails to work correctly.  Just try to use explorer in DETAILS mode - if you have a full directory, you NEVER get a place to shift-right click for the menu option.  I could litterally rant for an HOUR solid about how useless this feature has become.  Sad, because I used it all the time in XP.

I would say that many of the new features in Vista simply GET IN MY WAY, and frankly, I am not happy about it.  I use vista, but I actively discourage people from getting it unless they have a darn good reason.  After all, aside from a useless search feature, crippled and inconsitant right clicks, folders forget their sort orders CONSTANTLY, drag and drops take forever unless you want to give up thumbnails entirely, tab orders are wonky, driver support is STILL subpar...

Vista ME indeed.  I would like hope that the first update pack would fix all this, but frankly...

Maybe the next major OS version...

Some people don't see the merit of saved search folder, so here's a real life example of how I find it useful:

I have a lot of music files.  With traditional folder hierarchy I group them by genre, then artist.  But  very often you get special cases such as artists who fits multiple genres.  Of course it would be silly to duplicate artist folders in each genre folder, what you could do is make shortcuts, but it's difficult to manage and update.  With saved search folder, I can now save each genre as a search folder, assuming the mp3 files are all tagged right, it's alot easier.

To chopsnsauce

You can save a search to anywhere every time you make a search!  See the "Save Search" option on top of the explorer window after you do a search?  How can it get any more intuitive?

I am having completely different experience comparing to Xepol.  I found many new features in Vista improves my user experience, especially the new search.  Speed boost aside, it's just alot more powerful in general comparing to the old search.

With that been said there are certainly stuff need improvement.  

Folder view/type is a big one.  When create a new folder, it default to "Video and Picture" type, it should be smarter than that.  Also change the view in one folder type changes every other folder with the same type.  Ex: I have two picture folders, I made one view in detail because there are alot pictures in it, the other become view in detail also next time I open a new explorer window, because both use same template, that's very annoying.  Each folder should store it's own specific view, without interfere others.

And how about support tagging in Vista file system level, tag combined with search is so powerful but alot common files don't support tagging (fancy video and music formats, rar, etc)

Here are some of the things I love about Vista search.

!) type:

I  use type:xls to get all excel docs

type:exe to get all program

!!) kind:

A kind can be program or kind:im will search all Instant Messaging conversations. kind:mail will  search for all mail

!!!) name:

this operator will search only in the filenames

I love Vista Search. I took me a day or two. I had to modify the indexed location to include some from the other partition. But since then its been an awesome ride.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/addresources/advanced3.mspx

I've checked with someone who knows more about this than I do and this is his response -

Chopsnsauce -

• Search is contextual in Windows Vista and doesn’t do a full PC search everywhere you go.  When you go into start\username\searches, you theoretically could create and save a search folder in that view, however, any search your run from username\searches (and when I say run, I mean you type “Foo” into the Instant Search field in the top right hand corner of the Explorer) is just scoped to the Searches Folder.  You’re not likely to find anything.  Instead, back up a level to start\username, use Instant Search there, and you’ll get results.  From there you can save your Search Folder, and it will automatically save to the right place.

o You might ask why we didn’t just make every search field search your entire PC.  The reason is because in our usability testing, we found that people found it more intuitive to be able to scope their searches by navigating to a specific folder.  For example, imagine you had a folder name “Projects” which had a whole bunch of work from lots of different projects.  Maybe there’s a child folder named “Contoso” in that Projects folder.  If you know that the document you’re looking for has something to do with Contoso, just navigate to the Contoso folder and run a search.  That’s much faster than searching your entire Projects folder and then having to try and exclude stuff from other folders.  This easy way of floating back and forth between browse and search, is something no one else does, and we think it’s a great working model.

o That said, are there times when you might want to search your entire PC?  Of course, and that’s why you can use the Start Menu, start\username + Instant Search, or the Search Explorer (Start\Search)

• When you say network places, are you talking about being able to search network locations, like servers, or are you talking about other PCs?

@Hoa - Saved searches might be useful if:

a) YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO SEARCH FOR THE BLOODY SAVED SEARCHES!!!!  Getting there should be ONE CLICK!

b) they weren't as slow the 10th time as the first (indexes help, but if you wanna kill your machine, try indexing 2tb of drive space!)

c) Tags actually applied to everything instead of a demented hit and miss.

@kdjani: Howsabout *.xls or *.exe - does the same thing in XP, but is less typing, and actually FINDS unindexed things reliably.  Again, same comment about indexing 2 terebytes of drive space - just watch that machine die!

@Nick - The saved searches folder might be redemable if it was the root namespace for the Start menu|Search option, so that you could just use the explorer toolbar to select a saved search.  Of course, you still can't edit or refine a saved search, so it would remain pretty unfriendly.

Yes, Search is "context" sensitive.  Sadly, that context isn't always what one would expect, or it is just plain broken. I gave up after a few too many failed searches in the current folder that just plain failed to find things that were clearly there.  Worse, features like *.abc,*.def,*.ghi  which worked BEAUTIFULLY in XP just utterly fail in Vista. The inability to search for more than 1 thing at a time is a CLEAR step backwards.

And of course, in XP there was one place to go for search.  In Vista, there are at least 3, and they all act differently.  XP worked smoothly in one interface (unless you clicked the back button once it showed results causing it to go insane) - you could search the local folder or system wide.  Saved searches?  Hit the down arrow.

Was it as sophisticated as Vista's search?  No - but it WORKED.  

Frankly, I have a LONG list of features that could, nay SHOULD get torn out of Vista to improve its usability and search is right near the top of that list. (thumbnail generation on drag and drop and inconsistant right click menus on explorer window icons are also top contendors)

Port the kernel improvements back into the XP and you would have a winner.

@Nick White

Thanks for the reply.

I understand the reasons you have given for this, but I still think its counter-intuitive NOT to be able to add a new saved seach from start\username\searches.  

With regards to the problem of scope of a new saved search, what's wrong with using the same default scope as when you go start\search?  This would seem logical to me!  Oh, and as another poster has mentioned, the ability to amend a saved search would also be good!

Network Places is an unrelated rant about My Network Places being dumped in favour of Start\Network. If you want to talk about that as well, I'd be delighted! ;)

@Xepol. And all those things you did in XP are also available in Vista! But what you need to understand is that Vista is search centric. In XP search was just a feature.

1) You can still search in Vista like in XP. *.xls works even today. I just am a big fan of operators. And it is much faster!

2) Windows Key + F also works. Start Menu + Search also works!

3) And that is exactly why Vista by defautl does not index each and every location on your machine. You can still  search in unindexed locations also like XP.

@Xepol. Let me ask you this. Have you tried out vista yet ?

Please,my laptop suddenly stopped producimg amy audio sounds after a restart.Searches revealed that the driver for the  High Definition Audio Controller was missing or corrupt.Please how do I solve this problem? It's a Compaq pressario V6000?

Nun ist der zweite Teil der Artikelserie zu Suchtechniken fr Fortgeschrittene im Windows Vista Team Blog erschienen und auch dieser ist durchaus lesenswert. Er beschftigt sich mit der Mglichkeit, Suchvorgnge unter Windows Vista zu speichern. Als Beis

Hey ayo:  this blog is nt the best place for you to seek tech support -- I'd suggest you visit the public Windows Vista newsgroups to see if someone can help you with this issue.

Wow, I thought I was the only one. Sort order for each folder is forgotten by Vista all the time and so is the view. Every folder keeps going back to detailed view sorted aphabetically! I've already ticked the appropriate box in the Folder Options but it does nothing, apparently.

Okay, here's my problem with the Vista search.  I'm trying to do text searches of saved logs (plain text files), and it fails to show files that I *know* contain the search term.  The files ARE included in the indexed locations, the file type is explicitly set to search within file contents in the Search options, and I've rebuilt the indexes.  The file in question does show up in the results if I search for some other terms such as "license, but not for "helen" or "dreamsong", both of which do occur in the log.

Not even using the advanced search and telling it to search THAT folder within the file contents will make it show up.  What's the problem?

Also getting a hell of a lot of crashes in Vista as compared to XP.  In fact, Firefox crashed while I was typing this.  Luckily, when it restores a crashed session, it restores the text in fields like this as well.

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/xpsortorder.htm

The above link is very useful in xp.

But the same registry tweak is missing in vista!

I need a LOGICAL file name sequence.

0a, 0b, 3973cds.com, abd.exe

instead I get something like this:

0a, 0b, abd.exe 3973cds.com

If someone could figure out what Microsoft was thinking.... (sorry. strike that opened ended question).

What is the tweak!

jerrold

computer virus removal

www.schiffkey.com

64-Bit Support Correct Disk Cleanup shortcut for Windows Vista 64-bit (Kristan M. Kenney, Canucky.net)

I am trying to search pdf file contents for keywords. This worked fine, until I indexed the location the files were kept. I have checked in the search preferences that .pdf files are selected for "index properties and file contents". It works fine for .doc files. Anyone know why Vista will not do this?

Hey dj_bridges:  We do indeed index the contents of PDFs, provided you have Acrobat 8 (or the latest version) installed; you may need an upgrade to the client.

I have installed to the latest Adobe reader, but as soon as I index the file then it stops searching within the file. When I remove the file location from the indexed locations, I can select to search within a file and it find what I am looking for. Any ideas why indexing reduces functionality?

Hi again dj_bridges:  if you did not install Acrobat directly from the Adobe site, you may not have gotten the Windows Vista-compatible version of the Reader, which includes iFilter.  Note that if you visit http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html from a Windows Vista machine, you get a link to the Windows Vista version of the Reader, while if you go there from a Windows XP machine, you get the Windows XP version.  So, you may need to re-install the Reader to ensure you have the correct version.

I love Vista except for one thing.  Searching in Vista is completly ripped off from searching in OS X, which is one of the worst things about the Mac.  I used to always connect to a Mac from an XP machine if I needed to search for anything on the Mac, since XP's was so much better.  My big issue is that since I've upgraded to Vista, I can't find any of the pst files on my machine.  I've tried everything and the search always come up empty.  If I browse to the one folder where I know several of the files are, I see them just fine, but Vista is blind to them.  I yearn for the days where searching for *.pst gave me everything I needed.  What can I do?

Hey stevenyc:  I'd suggest you try this:

- Go to the Control Panel and type "Search" in the Instant Search field to bring up the Index controls

- Choose Advanced

- Select the Filetypes tab

- Make sure .PST has a checkmark in its box

That ought to help :)

And by the way, readers, you might note that MS first showed Desktop Search back in 2003, before Spotlight was incorporated into the Apple OS.  In actuality, we didn’t rip off anything from them.  

Further, Apple doesn't:

1) Let you remotely search other PCs with Fast Search

2) Allow tagging of files with meaningful keywords

3) Provide easy filtering, grouping or stacking of items

4) Integrate search with your browsing experience

This should better delineate the differences between Windows Vista's Desktop Search and OSX's Spotlight.

1. I don't think your Search works. My dtSearch program consistently finds 440 files on a simple Boolean content search. SAP AND (IS-U OR CCS)Using exactly the same search, Windows Vista will only find 361 no matter what I do. It doesn't work on a small sub-set that I created with docs and rtfs and it will not find all of the files, even though the content is duplicated. 2. In Vista Search Results when I Select All (361) and try to Move or Copy them it goes off into the Ether with a Discovere 0 items (0 bytes)... message. On the subset the Move worked ok. This has cost me several thousand dollars in lost productivity.

I’m using Norwegian Vista Ultimate.

Click the “Start”, select “Search”, in Location select "Local disk (C:)”, tick off "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files", enter "*.bmp" as search text, click the “Search” button. I expected that all bmp-files on the C-drive to be listed.  However, bmp-files in my Pictures folder are not included...  By changing the Location to "Pictures", the bmp-files are found.  By ticking off "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files” I expected ALL files to be included in the search, not a; to me unknown; subset of the files.

Create a folder in Pictures.  A search using Location "Local disk (C:)” will not find the folder.

I created two png-files in the Pictures folder some days ago.  When I this morning clicked the “Start” button, then entered "*.png" in the Search box, it didn't find any png-files.  4 hours later, repeating the search, those two files are found.  In both searches none of the 5000+ other png-files on the computer are found…

So far, I find searching in Vista just confusing. There are different ways to search - giving different results. I can’t work out what part of the file system that is searched. I can see some files are found, but could not be sure that all files are found.  Is the command line cmd /b /s “mask” the only reliable way of searching the entire file system?

Initially, similar issues and frustrations with Vista search but because of my own need for speed and listening to 'tech experts' advising how to tweak Vista, I shut off the indexing function without understanding its effects on search. After the advice of a wise geek, the following advice restored my search function and...Vista search works great from the desktop, from the start menu, or inside a file. For example, now right clicking a desktop file, and selecting search starts a search on my Lenovo T61 Vista Ultimate. After shutting off indexing and before reindexing as is recommended here, the search function was inop from the desktop or inside a file no matter how much work I put into the advanced search:

Note: allow several hours for reindexing to be completed. The advice given to me:

1. The Indexing is corrupted.

2. The Indexing service doesn’t working properly.

To troubleshoot this issue, I suggest we first perform these steps:

Step 1. Enable the Indexing Service in Control Panel

=============================

1. Click the Start Button, and then click Control Panel.

2. Click switch to a Classic View in left panel.

3. Double-click Programs and Features.

4. Click “Turn Windows features on or off” in left panel. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.    

5. In the prompt window, select the check box of “Indexing Service”, and them click OK.

6. Restart the computer and check if the issue persists.

If the issue persists, please try to rebuild the indexing to troubleshoot this issue:

Step 2. Rebuild the Indexing.

===============

1. Click Start, type Indexing options in the Search bar, and press Enter.

2. Click the Advanced button in the Indexing options window.

3. In the opened window, please click the Rebuild button in the Troubleshooting column.

I recently installed Vista Ultimate.

I have read the comments above (and other locations on the web), and can not seem to find a way to:

search for all files named "*.nsi" in a particular folder, that contain the word "regdll".

If the files are named "*.txt", the search works fine.  It seems, that Vista search does not understand that a *.nsi file is text and its contents can be searched.  

I changed the "indexed search" options to include a filter for "nsi" files as "Plain Text filter" (control panel->indexing options->advanced).  However, this probably only applies to those directories that are "indexed".  The directory in my search is not indexed (it is a network driver).

How can I search for "*.nsi" files, containing the string "regdll" in an specific (non-indexed) directory?

Thanks

Hey johnbrvc:  I consulted one of my colleagues on the Search team and he responded with the following advice:

1.  Go to Indexing Options | Advanced | File Types | Add New Extension for '.nsi' (if not in the list) & use the Plain Text Filter ("Index File Properties and Contents").  You may have already done this; these associations are used by Search (for non-indexed locations) as well as by the indexer.

2.  Go to Folder Options | Search (tab) | Always search file names and contents (might be slow).  By default, searches in non-indexed locations do not "crack" the files; this setting will change that.

In some cases, you may need to logoff and back on after making these changes (or restart the explorer process), since Search may have these associations cached.

Hope this helps!

The important part of your post was the last bit... "In some cases....".  That was the trick.  Evidently the cache was not refreshed.  I had already done 1 & 2 as you indicated, but I did not  restart explorer... Thanks.

I find Vista search absolutely horrible: one thing I really hate is that I can't sort by a column unti Vista finishes it's search - unlike XP, which I could sort on the fly. (Just did a search and found 1,681 results returned: took Vista 3-4 minutes to finish until I could order a column - and I have the latest hardware.)

No improvement to me.

All depends on how you've set up Vista. Downside of Vista is that just about every feature has to be configured on installation. There is no generic "Search for Folder/by name/type/date" or whatever, and the Windows Vista Search Folder, at Start Menu, doesn't work on all set ups. At least, not on mine or any I know of personally!

Best resort is to rely on good old keyboard shortcuts, such as Windows Key + F.

I am reminded of the Insect House at London Zoo. Full of little bugs.

Eddie.