Do you know of anyway to change what filter is used for particular extensions for the full-text indexing?

Not that I don't trust the html filter, but I'd prefer to search asp, aspx etc... using the plain-text filter.

This used to be possible in XP by setting a reg key, but I'm guessing that Vista's search system is considerbly more complex now.

Or, someone could go back to the '80s and dust off a copy of Lotus Magellan, and upgrade it for today's OS.

Someome made a good attempt:

https://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_zdpcm/is_200010/ai_ziff4749

(WinXP's search is flawed, it ignores certain file extensions unless you tweaked it.)

"There's nothing to install, nothing to configure, searching just works in Vista."

Except that it took you five screenshots, an options dialog, a bunch of "painful" trial and error to only search a small fraction of your hard drive. That's not Google-icious, it's Google as viewed through the eyes of a stereotypically bad Microsoft PM.

Hey, at least it's on the Start menu.

What are you talking about? Press Windows key (or CTRL+E), type what you're looking for, results are displayed in real time like Google Suggest as you type.

I was explaining a more advanced query, along with some under the hood background on how it all works.

In other words, three years later Microsoft finally re-implemented Spotlight. Poorly.

Oh, and not only that, they also have reimplemented Mac OS X's Users (aka UNIX /home) directory. Also poorly. I mean, come on now, how about also copying the good stuff, such as per-user settings stored as files, per-user Apps installed by dragging into user's Applications folder (no admin permissions required!), per-user fonts and color profiles (which get switched correspondingly when you switch users). The list can go pretty long. Oh, and Spotlight still kicks WDS's ass any day. For one it's much faster, for two it doesn't choke keyboard input as it searches so it feels "fluid", for three its UI "Doesn't Suck" TM.

That BeOS filesystem guy did his job pretty well at Apple.

So is it not possible to exclude archives in indexed locations from searches? It looks that way.

Why does everything Microsoft include a bushel of weird caveats and exceptions?

I think Vista is looking more and more like "lets throw in some features", a LOT will be completely amazingly annoying to the average user. What's this thing with learning a search syntax ? Come on, research something better than that.

If I want to search for an extention I should just be able to write it and it should understand that is an extention. And to require the boolean operators to be all uppercase is quite frankly amazingly stupid.

This an a number of things really bugs me with Vista and I'm not entirely sure it will be a hit.

I think I agree with Joel's assesment of the situation at MS:

"Every piece of evidence I've heard from developers inside Microsoft supports my theory that the company has become completely tangled up in bureaucracy, layers of management, meetings ad infinitum, and overstaffing. The only way Microsoft has managed to hire so many people has been by lowering their hiring standards significantly. In the early nineties Microsoft looked at IBM, especially the bloated OS/2 team, as a case study of what not to do; somehow in the fifteen year period from 1991 - 2006 they became the bloated monster that takes five years to ship an incoherent upgrade to their flagship product."

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/24.html

And more, directly from a MS developer that worked on Vista:

https://www.drizzle.com/~lettvin/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html

Being able to just hit start and then enter your search string is neat, but it unfortunately breaks an old feature I'm gonna miss quite a bit. I used to just be able to hit Start then R, for example to open a command window. Or Start + U + R to restart the computer, Start + U + U to shut it down. There were a few other combos I used a lot that will now not work because the search box has focus.

BTW, the + syntax above means 'then', not 'plus'.

Windows+R is your friend for invoking the Run command.

It looks like many of the people reading this entry have not tried Vista. I guess I'm not explaining this very well, since I picked an advanced scenario.

> used to just be able to hit Start then R,

Use Windows+R, that's what I always used in XP, and it works the same way.

> What's this thing with learning a search syntax

You don't have to learn a search syntax. Just like Google, type what you want, and matches appear. It's actually more like Google Suggest since it happens in real time. And just like Google, you *CAN* *OPTIONALLY* enter advanced queries right in the search box. Does this mean you have to? Nope.

The uppercase boolean thing is incredibly annoying, though. I don't know how anyone would ever figure that out on their own. The good news is that the AND clause is implicit-- if you type a space in your query, it's treated as an AND.

Again, just like Google.

So let me re-emphasize: if you know how to use Google, you know how to use Vista's search. Just press the Windows key, or CTRL+E, and start typin'.

Jeff I think you explained it correctly the first time. Its the fact that people love jumping on the smash M$ band wagon so much that they miss alot of the good things M$ puts out. There too busy fighting there holy war instead of just enjoying cool features.

Let me start another war. JAVA vs .NET.
.NET destroys JAVA easily.

Dude, so many people just upped and got to bashing Vista with preconcieved notions, unfortunately I judged upon a preconcieved notion too, I thought all of them were either hardcore Mac users who never used Vista, or people who hate XP and never used vista, and it didn't even occur to me the possibility that someone there might be using Vista.

So if any of you out there are actually using Vista while bashing it, then my deepest apologies for judging you so harshly.

Bashing Vista is easy because they changed so much without making a single thing easier.

I really don't understand how anyone can be happy with the new startmenu for example, either you have to search all the time (= back to good old commandline basically) or you have to scroll a useless list.

Second, the UAC, the msot annnoying thing ever, and if you turn it off you break things instead of getting something like a login dialog which is standar din comparable systems.

Third, the million of links to a million of features in every window, read joels blog on "choices are bad".

It's really not the most user friendly system that Microsoft produced.

You can get search in XP, what more is there in Vista really ? I know, lots "under the hood" that will eventually force us to upgrade even though we don't want to but that's another thing.

It will probably be like XP where it wasn't really mature until SP2.

I suggests you try Google Desktop as a search interface, I stopped using Win XP search a while back

It still doesn't beat good old grep!

KL, when people talk about fanboys, that haven't tested Vista at all, they mean you.

I have no idea how you can even think of comparing the new start menu with a command prompt. Can you type 'Del' + Enter to start Delphi in the command prompt you have in mind? Because that is how Vista's start menu works.

And UAC, while it seemed annoying in the beginning, shows much less often once you've configured your Windows. And, of course, you can turn it off. I didn't.

Hmm, ok, weird since I have tried it since day one.

Maybe it's the fanboys like you that shoudl take a closer look ?

Here's some more annoyances:

I can no longer drop a path onto command line windows, what's up with that ?

I can no longer drag files onto the explorer window on the taskbar and have it popup like in previous windows versions.

Again, what did they make easier in this system ? It's unbelivable.

I ment shorcuts, not files, try and drag a shorcut from a webpage or the location bar in IE onto a folder or explorer window on the taskbar in Vista, it wont popup like in XP.

THIS is what you're complaining about, that you can't drag a link from IE onto the TASKBAR to open it? Funny stuff.

Jeff, thanks for the explanations. The help files for search are useless. I love the new search (now I can use it..) but I'd still like a simple way to edit saved searches and see their criteria: I can't remember what my saved searches are actually looking for!

Eric Lee has a nice blog post covering some other advanced searches in Vista:

https://blogs.counterpunchsoftware.com/2007/01/hail-to-integrated-search.html

Vista's indexing is time based, why couldn't they do what Apple did with OSX and make indexing realtime? In OSX a file is indexed as it's written to the filesystem. It seems to me that all Microsoft have done is add a GUI to the old Win2000 indexing engine. Lame!

it is updated in realtime you moron. try creating a textfile and then search for it right after its been created.

Boris,

Just nitpicking, but you can "type 'Del' + Enter to start Delphi in the command prompt". Ok, windows command line might not do it (unless you have a del.bat file), but there are a lot of command prompts that can and do search.

I found it funny because minutes before reading your comment, I was typing "del" + tab + enter on a bash command line to start kylix. So I had to comment ;)

jeff, nice info you've given here...funny thing is i was searching high and low in vista help to find and answer to my question. my question:

can i use boolean expressions in the advanced search window?

couldn't find any info. the interface doesn't suggest you can use boolean expressions either.

so my *real* question is how to i search a drive and find all files that are _NOT_ .mp3?

i tried looking for this answer for my mac as well and as robust as osx is, couldn't find the answer there either.

i googled for some help too...and that's how i found this site.

any insight would be cool...thanks.

Scott:

NOT type:(.mp3)

Thank you for the post .. I was not knowing this...

New Mansions in Search - Advanced Query Syntax

https://blogs.msdn.com/jonasbar/archive/2007/01/31/new-mansions-in-search-advanced-query-syntax.aspx

I'm an old man [73] that had no problem searching for *.wav extensions in XP.
Not in Vista ... how do I search Vista for this extension or any other extension?

norm: ext:(*.wav)

I'm actually trying to figure out how to do the full text search. I forgot the name of a file but do remember a line of text in it. Please hit me back on my website if you can help.

I have been using Windows Vista for nine months now.
I have 4 pages of typed up 'gripes'
and I curse Vista every day - it is a real lemon.

But my biggest gripe is the Windows Desktop Search,
I absolutely hate it!

Initially the indexing didn't index my C++ source code.
It is unnecessarily difficult to find how to set up search
indexing in Vista
(XP was bad enough, but MS has really buried a lot of Vista settings
in obscure and completely different places)
The Search Tools/Modify Index locations... only
appears when you search from start, not when you
search a folder from Windows Explorer (which is how I always
start my searches).
I knew the search index settings I was looking for,
a novice user would have no clue.
It would have been nice to have this setting always prominently
accessible from the advanced search panel.

I've set up indexing to do text search for my file types,
but search frequently (most of the time) doesn't find my search
string in files that do indeed have the text,
and/or find the string in some files but not others
(even in older files which should have been indexed at some time).

I have lots of different kinds text files
and having to set up indexing for them, and then
selecting the directories to search and then
rebuilding the index is a real pain.

I tried disabling indexing,
the search finds things more reliably, but
the searches take forever and often seem to
hang at about 98% complete.
(I always completely disable indexing under XP
and still have reasonable search response times).

I've given up trying to tweek the search indexing settings
and avoid using the search.

I only trust it for searching MS applications' documents
and use my IDE to search in code and
the venerable grep command for everything else.
Not trusting the search results is a huge minus.

Yep. Results cant be trusted.

I use dir /s for files and find for contents.

I get blatently different results searching with dir /s.

I do not use the indexer. Why sufffer a slow computer for the benifit of quick searches? Remember where you put stuff!!

I guess MS tried to make a "safe" operating system for average users who just need a media center. In the same process they created a nightmare for advanced users. I've used Vista for about 6 months now, and every day I get annoyed by its stupid muck heap of inefficiency and restrictions. Vista is a ?&@#%! play console wannabe.

Michael, if I wanted to remember stuff, I wouldn't use a computer. Ditto for writing a resume. Or chatting with other people.

Also, the indexer is only slow during the initial indexing (when you migrate from XP to Vista, and a lot of files have to be indexed).

After that, the performance impact is negligible, especially given that we have multi-core CPUs in the consumer market for years now...

Hello all,

I have a comment to make, which I don't think I've ever seen anyone else ever mention. I have just installed vista (well, yesterday) and there are many wierd things - why are so many options etc hidden away, why can't it all be put in the control panel??

But what really gets me, is why is there all this fuss over 'searching'. Why do the majority of users need to search their computer? Surely they know where they save files, i.e. in documents. I only used the search features in xp maybe once or twice in 5 years, when I lost a programme which I thought I had. Surely most users have videos in the video folder, music in music folders, downloads in the download folder, and everything else in program files or documents. So why search? the search facility in internet explorer in the tool bar is great, because people surf/search the net, but they don't surf/search computers.

Am I on my own? Roger Nelson says he uses the search to find c++ code. Isn't this somewhere obvious, like in a folder called c++ code or programmes etc. Or am I missing something?

and with regards to the syntax, i just tested vista's search (for the first and probably last time), and typed *.wav, and it listed all my wav files. I then typed *.mp3 and it listed all my mp3s. So why, Norm, do you say it doesn't work in vista?

Tom,
Many people have many different ways of organizing their information. Also, not the difference between searching for a file where you know the full name, or part of the name, and searching for a file or files that contain something in it, like searching for an email or a document or a code file, or a pdf.

For instance, I have a subversion repository of my company's source code with tens of thousands of files in it. I know there is an example that uses a certain class somewhere in those thousands of files. Just knowing that the file in somewhere under that base folder is not really much help, other than as a starting point, as I do not know the files name - they were not created by me, and I might not ever have actually looked at them before - similar to know that there is a web site or page out there somewhere with information on how to take advantage of the advanced search features of Vista, but not knowing the URL of that page. I need an indexer that will crawl the thousands of files in thousands of folders, indexing their contents for me, so that when I search for a method by name, it will show me all the files where that method is used. Or company name. Or whatever.

There are many people who have needs above and beyond finding a file by name in a folder with a few hundred entries. I often an trying out new programs for a few weeks, or writing my own, or creating libraries, etc. My file system is complicated because I 'use' - some might say 'abuse' - it. Also, I do not always want everything under my 'home' or 'users' location. It might be shared, or I, personally, might not feel that it is appropriate to put work related documents under my personal folder, even on my personal machine. I also might need to share files across multiple machines, using various mechanisms. I find it to be a good practice to not put certain files on my system drive, to make it easier to recover. I make a big use of portable applications, which by definition are on removable media. Given that I want to move the portable drive and maintain the programs on them independent of the machine, I also might want to do the same for content.

Just my $.02, but I waited for the RTM in 12/06 to even install Vista. But it only took a month of griping before I realized I could not go back to XP. I understand those who taught themselves a certain way to do things, and do not want to spend the time to learn new ways. But, for me, it has been a productivity booster. It is hard for me to complain about the OS when there are very good 3rd party solutions for a given problem. To me, the question is, can I get it done, not can I get it done, and the OS is the only option. It is all software. If people WANT to be disappointed, they will be, and the compliment is true, too. Like people who complain about a radio station instead of simply changing the channel.

Is one better than the other? Is there any way to answer that that is not biased and personal? Perhaps, but I find the world to be full of people who think that they have the right answer to non-deterministic questions, and that is the root of all evil.

Noel

yeah i admit i hadn't really thought about searching for a particular within (possibly) many files. I just feel vista has gone way over the top, with search boxes here, there and everywhere. Together with (what i believe) to be excessively large toolbars etc. A case in point is the latest office software - the toolbar, ribbon bar do they call it?, seems like it takes up half the screen, especailly when viewed on a laptop. And all these search boxes just seem to bloat the menu more.

Noel, I agree entirely that people always find problems if they look for them, the concept of a half full, or half empty glass. Microsoft and everything it does is very easy to knock. I quite like vista, but i wish there was some consistency - the best user interface is one that doesn't change, and as almost everyone now knows their way around XP, why change it? Apparently another major microsoft OS is touted for 2010, will this change it all again?

does anyone know how to get it to consistently search for text within
a document like an email or notepad? i've been practicing trying this for hours playing with the index locations so i can find an email with text in it, etc and it still cannot even find a file that i put on the desktop! whereas in xp it takes like 3 seconds max. vista was still looking for the file 5 minutes later and appeared to lock up as this was a major task for it. i don't see how this is any better. you don't have to look very far to find fault with it - it just is. going from an obvious search of 3 seconds to well over 3 minutes and counting is not better, duh.

@tom on May 8, 2008 11:37 AM

right click on the menu bar and choose 'Minimize the ribbon.' Now only the menu bar is visible on top of the screen, giving you much more space to view your document. Click on a menu item to have the ribbon reppear, and then it disappears again after you have made your choice. Easy, simple, and much cleaner interface than before.

I held off installing Office 2007 for so long because of other ppl recommendation. I eventually installed it last month, and love it.

I'm hoping using Vista search is the same story.

So this is a response to the first question, because I was frustrated by the same problem (i.e. that Vista search by default treats .html, .aspx, .asp, .etc with either an HTML filter or a File Properties filter, but not a Plain Text filter--which is needed if you want to search through your code). In order to change the default search filters, just edit the registry so that the given file extension is associated with the filter you want. More specifically if you want to do HTML to plaintext , go to registry editor (regedit) and look under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*FILE EXTENSION YOU WANT TO BE TREATED WITH PLAIN TEXT FILTER HERE*\PersistentHandler. You should change the default value to whatever the value is in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.txt\PersistentHandler (e.g. change HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.aspx\PeristentHandler from {eec97550-47a9-11cf-b952-00aa0051fe20} to {5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}).

(Tom > Roger Nelson says he uses the search to find c++ code. Isn't this somewhere obvious, like in a folder called c++ code or programmes etc. Or am I missing something?

I have thousands of source and documentation files, hundreds of folders, and hundreds of thousands of lines of code, not to mention code and files from colleagues (as Noel well described); a fast reliable search facility is critical to my productivity [BTW, I did setup the search text filter (a ridiculous and IMHO unnecessary procedure). Vista Search is still slower than XP (often appears to hang as Mark mentioned) with very unreliable and unsatisfactory results].

For a year now I have been completely frustrated with Vista's horrible search, frequent crashes of Windows Explorer, slow response, useless features, obfuscated system settings, poor network functioning, inability to work with my existing peripherals, huge demand on system resources, etc., etc., ..

I just bought a new computer. Surprisingly (actually not) on this higher end machine, XP was the default preinstalled OS. Probably just to appease Microsoft the Vista disk was thrown in with the rest of the useless promotional software CDs.

I hope Windows 7 will not just look pretty but will have fixed all the problems that are in Vista by the time Microsoft ends the XP product cycle.

Someone please tell me how to do this in vista: Find all files ending in .txt, somewhere in c:/projects/work, and containing the text "bike".

==================================
In Windows XP:
Right click directory name, choose search, "*.txt", containing "bike".

==================================
In Linux:
cd /home/csbear/projects/work
grep -lr bike *.txt
and if i want the full file path:
grep -lr bike `pwd`"/"*.txt

==================================
In Vista:
??? I don't know how to do the search. I give up, i think Microsoft make it easier, i just haven't figured it out yet. This may take a while...

Can someone show me how can "Windows Vista search" show image files that have no tags.

Something like "hastag:false".

Microsoft has lost sight of the purpose of the GUI: To insulate the end user from the underlying code changes. After figuring out WHERE Search resides within Vista, using search, I cannot figure out how to search a folder for file names *.* for string 780G.

Does someone in Microsoft think this is progress?
Wouldn't you like to know who that was?

Microsoft should think of all the end user knowledge, including coding knowledge, that just went down the tubes and the helpdesks that light up because of these types of changes.

"Add/Remove programs" is now called "Programs and Features" and for what purpose? Every existing user of add/remove programs USED TO KNOW where it was, what it was called and what it did. Jeez

Vistas capability of searching inside of files is crap just like it was in XP. This feature was one of the best things about 2000 because it actually worked.

For anyone that wants to search inside of files without having to open then one at a time I recommend you try agent ransack from agentransack.com

Sorry, but Vista 'search' seems to be less efficient than the DOS filters(and Norton Commander)that I was using TWENTY FIVE YEARS AGO!
THIS IS NOT PROGRESS!!!!

I've now found 'Agent Rucksack' which actually seems to be able to search specified locations only for any parameters I specify. I'm not an MS basher, but why, oh WHY do they keep breaking things that used to work OK?

Same with 'Help', hours finding and downloading programs and registry tweaking just to get to get to be able to open help files which worked well in NT, 2000, XP etc... (and the 'new' help system seems no improvment on the old one!)

MS really need to learn that IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT!!!!

Although I've had Vista for some time and generally find it useable, the search is awful. If you want to learn the new syntax then great, I'm not opposed to the introduction of it per se, but don't patronise me with a progress bar that takes 5 minutes to fill for a search that's going to take half an hour. The new syntax must bring new functionality, or make it easier without losing functionality - I'm not an expert but I don't think the Vista search is as powerful as grep.

I've got years' worth of archives sitting in .zip, .rar, .arj and .7z files on my disks, including code as well as plenty of text formats (like LaTEX) and plenty with no file extension. The time taken to configure Windows to correctly index it would take forever - but grep's always done it.

C'mon csbear, it's not that hard: "bike ext:(*.txt)"

Thank God Mladen Mihajlovic - YOU answered the questions I have seen
asked by many and answerd by not one posters sin Oct 4, 2008: how to search a file type that contains a string. YOU have a future in tech support!

After 30 years in computers, I find it's always easy when you already know how to do it!

find txt files containing a the string of letters: bike

bike ext:(*.txt)

Now what if I want to search for the string "<% if" in "*.ascx" files?

"<%" ext:(*.ascx)

does not work. Tried all manner of escaping the non-alpha characters.

I'd use the win32 version of grep if I wasn't getting "*.ascx: Invalid argument" or "(standard input): Not enough space".

I've developed for Windows systems all my life. I'm so glad I jumped ship and develop on a Mac (with underlying unix) at home. Now if only I could do so for my day job.

I know other devs who are doing the same. They're sick & tired of MS. MS faces a future of decline.

Hi Jeff,

The top of your page states:

Which means "*.vbproj;*.csproj" becomes "ext:(*.vbproj OR *.csproj)"

But ext in Windows Search Query Syntax denotes an extension so including "*." seems incorrect ("*.vbproj" isn't an extension; vjproj is). In other words, shouldn't "*.vbproj;*.csproj" become "ext:(vbproj OR csproj)" ?

If you want to include "*." then the Windows Search Query "filename:" should be used instead.

Regards,

Patrick