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If you’ve upgraded to Windows 7, chances are you’ve discovered some exciting improvements along the way. Have you discovered their “search filters” yet? If not, go to Windows Explorer by right-clicking on the Start button and choosing to open Windows Explorer. Once launched, look in the top right corner where you will find the search bar.
At first glance, the search bar looks like the one above. However, once you enter your search term, a small menu drops down with a message to “add a search filter” and a series of words highlighted in blue, such as: Type, Date Modified, Type, and Size. Clicking on any of these words adds the command followed by a colon (for example, “Type:”) to the search bar and opens a new screen with additional options. Please note that the words vary depending on the location you are looking for and the properties available. You can also see options such as: author, name, length, date created, date captured, and tags.
If you choose the type of search filter, your options will be:
- Calendar: Restrict results to calendar entries
- Communication: Restricts results to entries related to communication.
- Contact – Results restricted to Contacts
- Document: Restricts results to documents and spreadsheets.
- Email: Restricts results to email messages.
- Feed: Restricts results to RSS feeds
- Folder: Restrict results to folders
- Game: Restricts results to games.
- Instant Message: Restrict results to instant messages
Each type of search filter has its own menu of options. For example, if you choose Date Modified, you have several options, such as choosing a date or date range from a calendar, or selecting from these options: A long time ago, Earlier this year, Earlier this month, Earlier this week , Last week and Yesterday.
Specific search filters appear when you search for specific folders. For example, if you click Videos and enter a term in the search box, you’ll be presented with search filters such as Duration, Date Created, and Type. If you know the video you’re looking for is short, you can narrow the results to “Short (1-5 minutes).” On the other hand, if you know the video is long, try a longer filter, such as “Long (30-60 minutes)” or “Very long (more than 60 minutes). Narrow results based on known criteria, such as length of the video, it makes it easier to find relevant results.
While search filters are new to Windows 7, the concept isn’t new. Microsoft Word has allowed users to search based on properties for a while now. Search filters allow you to search for files based on a file’s properties from within Windows Explorer. For example, if you have saved comments within the Properties of a Word document, you can use the following syntax to search for that document based on its comments: Type:=document comment: Windows will restrict your search results to Word documents containing comments in the stored in the file properties.
The new search filters are useful to help you find files based on different criteria. Take some time now to familiarize yourself with these different options so that the next time you need to find a file, you’ll know how to find it quickly with the search filters.