Windows 7 File Search Indexing Options

I’m having trouble getting Search to work in Win 7 as well as it worked for me in XP. (I don’t need indexing or searching inside files; I merely want to search on file names.) I had a system of naming my files with a certain number of brace characters (ASCII 123, “{“) to mean different things. But if I attempt to search on a brace in Win 7, it returns all files. In XP, if I wanted a list of all files with 3 braces in their names, I entered *{*{*{* in the search box. How do I get that same list in Win 7?

Add me to the “you’re joking?” list.
I found this page while trying to find help using Windows 7 search. I really trying to get used to the new Windows Explorer, but I found the new search method to be very cumbersome and lacking in features.

I’m trying to search by file type. I can type in the exact filename and it won’t find the file, but enter one or two characters and it works. Arg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Add me to the “you’re joking” bandwagon – what took a simple right click and search (and search remained open) has been replaced with another unfriendly series of strokes – Another RIBBON design by Real Idiocy By Bungling Obnoxious Nitwits

I must be doing somthing wrong. Have had my Windows 7 PC now for 2 weeks and I just cant get it to find my files. I searched for the mail file *.ost and it only found the file if I did the search in the exact folder where file was. That was a very useful search…. nooot.

I tried to find a tool used by vmware and searched for “vmware-vdiskmanager.exe” did the search in the search windows just abow the “start” button, searched on the “Computer” search window, searched in the saved search “Everywhere” nothing found.

Searched in the exact folder where it was and presto it could be found. What do I have to do to just FIND a file? Lots of guides on how to filter your search nothing on how to actually find files. Skip all the content searches just find me the filename! Help?

This optimistic article is absurd. Anyone who tries to find a file in Win 7 comes straight up against the plain fact that the search facility is total garbage compared with what was around in XP. It used to be easy, albeit slow, to search for a word inside a document. Now there seems to be no option for this at all. I indexed all the files on my hard drive the way your article says but it’s still a matter of sheer chance whether or not the search window turns up a file.

Aseem, please do a simple scientific test before you write articles telling us how great the Win 7 search facility is. Create a few MSWord files containing unique items of text and save them to various folders around your hard drive. Then see if the search facility can find the files based on a word within them. If I’m wrong that this will fail most times, please explain to me what I’m doing wrong myself since this test has failed many times in my hands.

Windows 7 seems to be the most stable OS Microsoft has come up with yet. Sadly, it’s also the most worthless to users. It offers endless features nobody wants or needs (e.g. glass, 3D displays of files, irritating snapping of windows to full screen if you dare to drag them anywhere near the top of your display) but falls down in a heap on so many elementary useful things (e.g. letting users choose where to put the taskbar, creating undockable toolbars), most particularly the utterly worthless search facility.

I have used every version of Windows starting with 3.1 and 7 is the worst I have ever seen. Like many others, I have decided to dump Windows and move to MAC.

I guess any operating system will have some limitations, and Microsoft can only go so far to provide every functionality. I guess they do their best in providing the most functionality at lowest cost.

For finding and searching files, I have been using biterscripting for a long time (have used it on various Windows releases). Here are a couple of commands that you will find useful.

lf -r -n “*.doc” “C:/somefolder” ($fmtime >= “20100201″)

Will find MS Word files whose modification time is at least Feb 1, 2010.

scr ss_findstr.txt dir(“C:/somefolder”) str(“search string”)

Will list all files that contain the search string “search string”.

The documentations for these are at http://www.biterscripting.com/helppages/lf.html and http://www.biterscripting.com/helppages/SS_FindStr.html .

There is also a good command SS_FindEmailStrs that will find emails containing all of the specified search terms.

Hope this helps.

I’ve read the article and all the comments, but still can’t find any info on searching for file contents. I’ve tried shutting off indexing and turning it on, including a index for C: with contents, but results still turn up empty when searching for text contents withing files that I know exist: ie. text within a PDF or DOC file.

Can anyone help me here? Am I missing something? I had better search capabilities in the DOS days.

I’ll consolidate MY Win7 experiences including Win7’s (belch/spew) absolutely useless “Search” function by saying that overall Windows 7 is pure unadulterated CRAP!!! Too bad MS won’t do refunds on software. It’s back to WinXP SP3 for me. I will be doing the C:\format routine….SOON !!!

Anyone who says that Windows 7 search is easy surely did not try to use it. I have a folder with nearly 2000 files, and I can’t even find something in the file names. I have tried even searching a term that I was actually seeing on the screen and it keeps returning a “no result”.

I have found no way to actually index those files, altough they are in my library folder, which, from what I understand, should be indexed automatically.
Unfortunatelly it’s my computer PC, so I’ll have to endure that, but I’ll sure install any other search software to do it for me, as Windows seems to decided that searching is not important.

Seriously though, how much did you get paid to write this drivel? Search in the old days, when you could right click a drive and tell it to find *.*mp3* and find EVERY mp3 on the drive quickly, and effectively was a GOOD search function.

Having to spend DAYS training a search tool how to do something, that it MIGHT get right, and MIGHT find the things you want, while taking up more and more resources on your PC to sometimes work….well it’s just plain stupid. As is the person it seems that wrote this article.

MS should have made the search function SIMPLE, not complicated. Speed is worse now, unless I index EVERYTHING, CONSTANTLY, on all my PCs and servers, and even then searches take longer and yield results that make me cringe.

So, how much DID you get paid for this ‘article’?

it just cannot seem to search my hard drive for .jpeg. wtf? it will find some files in some random place without telling me why it wont look everywhere else. i only want to put all my pics together. how do you screw up a search function so badly?

It’s clear that Win7 search isn’t as good as compared to WinXP, and from my few experiences, I concur.

But if people want to stay with Win7, is there something I can recommend for them to try in terms of file search?

I am joining the bandwagon. Windows 7 Search does not work with network drives, which is all I use. The writer of the article does seem to live in an alternate reality.

Thank you guys for clarifying what a relatively unknowledgable computer operator like me was beginning to think was my stupidity. Very reassuraning to note that it isn’t. As many have said, the search facility in 2000 and XP (and maybe even earlier ones…?) was a simple matter of pressing ctrl+F and typing in a suffix or even part of the filename, or text within in the file. And it worked, as far as I remember, without fail. It was one of the bits of the OS I used most often. We have all (maybe….) been parted from large amounts of money for an OS that got rid of a really reliable search facility and replaced it with a joke that cannot find anything at all, on which Outlook Express and even Windows Mail, doesn’t work, and on which the taskbar is infinitely less useful. Oh and by the way, again perhaps it is my own slowness, but is anyone else having the same experience that I am having with Homegroups – to say nothing of all Windows networking since XP (which was no problem). OK I may not be an expert, but I had no trouble before Vista.

What I also want to see is a further response from the joke who wrote the original article that included the phrase ‘Overall, the new search features in Windows 7 are greatly enhanced and let you customize most of the search options. Enjoy!’ Either he is talking crap or we are all stupid. I don’t think we should have to read screenloads of instructions about how to get something to work that used to perfectly well, that we have paid a great deal of money for, and doesn’t do what he says it does when you have turned on the sixpence that he recommends.

I agree with Enrico, when he begs MS to stop shooting itself in the foot. I am not a Microsoft basher at all, and there are obviously many things about 7 that are great, but this is not one of them.

I have a directory in which there is nothing but avis. If I use the search facility to search for avis which that directory actually open in front of me, it finds no avis. If I put a filename in in full, it finds nothing. Give me a break. I have just been examining Ubuntu for the first time, and it looks extremely attractive. Greatly enhanced my a***.

windwos 7 search wasn’t crippled or anything… you just have to now how to search… well yes is harder now in comparison… but anyway…

for example… if you want to search for the content of a file, just add a “content:” (without quotes) before what to search… so if i want to search a “xxx” inside a file just put in teh search textbox “content:xxx”.
and so on… there are many filters, you just need to know them.
Cheers

Windows 7 search is a scrap. I tried to index using index option on specified directories and later on try to search files on those specific directories with index turned on, Guess what ? no files appeared even that i tried to put every extension in the index. I tried to search files without index option and it all come out. Anybody has a suggestion? I lost too must time about figuring out how this search option would work

Thank you

I’ve read all the comments and I’ve come to the conclusion you people don’t know what you’re doing. Any of you. Windows 7 search is amazing (as well as Vista’s) and is the primary reason I left XP (not to mention it’s nearly a decade old).

Pretty simple. Hit the Windows Key on your keyboard. Then start typing. Wow, that was hard, wasn’t it?

The search has ALWAYS been able to find what I’ve been looking for. Yes, it returns extra results because it searches within files instead of exclusively file names (I believe there is an option to disable this, but I don’t remember), but it always lists what I was looking for.

I migrated my mother away from XP for this very reason. She doesn’t understand folder structure, so when she needs a file, she has no idea where to find it. In Windows 7, you don’t need to know. You just hit the Windows Key and start typing the file’s name. Voila, it appears without fail every time. She’s never had a problem finding a file and neither have I.

As for you people who name your files cryptically with multiple braces, that’s just stupid. Sorry, but it is.

There’s actually an entire API devoted to Windows Search and the customization is very powerful. Even simple things like putting quotes around your search or file: etc. makes it quite flexible, and for 99% of users, that’s all they need.

If you move from Windows 7 to Mac because of the search, then I can’t help but laugh at you.

The Windows 7 search sucks. I cannot believe it. XP is better.

Hey n25philly,

1st, let me give you a link that will give you some insight into Windows 7 search features. The link is:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/help/files-folders-search

This is a Microsoft site. The video is about 4 minutes long. Regardless of your experience, I bet you’ll pick up something you didn’t know. Be sure and watch the whole video. Another common way to search is to use wildcards. Wildcards have been around since the DOS days and were as handy back then as they are today. The most common wildcards are ? and *. If you do a search on Windows wildcards, you’ll find lots of info on this but essentially, the ? can be used in the place of any single character and the * can take the place of many characters. The main difference between these two is the ? replaces one character only while the * can replace several characters at a time. Finally, Windows offers other search functions such as date, size, name of file, keyword search in the file, etc. When you jump over to email, you can also specify to look for emails with a subject of money from Joe Smith. The library feature of Windows 7 is nice too especially once you understand how it can work for you. Hope this helps.