Help with Vista search function

  • Thread starter Thread starter Daniel
  • Start date Start date
D

Daniel

Hi

is there a site where there is an explanation for how to use the Search
function in Vista Ultimate SP1.

thanks

Daniel
 
Open Vista's Help and Support and type SEARCH
in the "Search Help" box, then press the Enter key.

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience -
Windows Vista Enthusiast

---------------------------------------------------------------

Hi

is there a site where there is an explanation for how to use the Search
function in Vista Ultimate SP1.

thanks

Daniel
 
Thanks Carey

I was hoping for a more definitive "how to" but I guess that will have to
do.

regards

Daniel
 
Daniel said:
is there a site where there is an explanation for how to use the Search
function in Vista Ultimate SP1.
Click to expand...

Advanced search techniques
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/advanced-search-techniques.aspx

Coding Horror: Exploring Vista's Advanced Search
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000731.html

In my hands, on my Vista Ultimate machine that is over a year old, Vista
Search for strings in files often fails -- in fact Vista's search fails for
me more often than it works. I can get search to work in Windows 95, 98,
2000, and XP, but without a 3rd party tool I am not smart enough to find
files with specified strings in Vista. I have found that Agent Ransack,
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/, works well to find files in Vista
that I cannot find with Vista's search.

For quite some time I have pressed Microsoft for a solution to Vista's
search problem. I would downgrade back to XP because of the Vista search
problem, but I refuse to pay Microsoft more money to downgrade from their
flawed product.

Microsoft has shown little concern about losing old files when Vista search
does not work, and has shown little interest in debugging or troubleshooting
the search failure. Instead of being helpful and learning about a flaw in
their new product, Microsoft now blocks E-mails from me, including Nick
White, who hosts the Advanced search tecniques blog. I am "rejected" by
Microsoft now because I wanted Vista's search to work and they now refuse to
talk about the problem or any solution. From May 5th:
Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:

(e-mail address removed)
An error occurred while trying to deliver this message to the recipient's
e-mail address. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message
for you. Please try resending this message, or provide the following
diagnostic text to your system administrator.

(e-mail address removed)
An error occurred while trying to deliver this message to the recipient's
e-mail address. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message
for you. Please try resending this message, or provide the following
diagnostic text to your system administrator.

The following organization rejected your message: mailb.microsoft.com.
 
Advanced search techniques
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/advanced-search-techniques.aspx

Coding Horror: Exploring Vista's Advanced Search
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000731.html

In my hands, on my Vista Ultimate machine that is over a year old, Vista
Search for strings in files often fails -- in fact Vista's search fails for
me more often than it works. I can get search to work in Windows 95, 98,
2000, and XP, but without a 3rd party tool I am not smart enough to find
files with specified strings in Vista. I have found that Agent Ransack,
http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/, works well to find files in Vista
that I cannot find with Vista's search.
Click to expand...

Just one of many examples where Vista is broken. I just tried an
experiment. I opened a Word document at random and came up with a
how-to for using E-Trade's trading platform. Notes I written to
myself. The phrase "market order" appears multiple times across
several documents somewhere within the text, but never in any file
name directly.

I used "advanced search" to search for the phrase. I made sure to
check look in non indexed and also Everywhere. Vista returned 167 hits
after narrowing the search to documents however NONE of the returned
"hits" contained the phrase and many hits contained neither word. So
Vista produced both false negative and false positives but seemed
unable to find any documents where the phase actually appears.

I next enclosed the phrase within quotes and searched again. Vista
said in found nothing. Yet I'm looking at the phrase in several
documents.

I repeated the experiment this time searching for my last name which I
know appears in thousands of documents. Vista only found 8 files where
my last name appears as author of some Excel spreadsheet ignoring all
the other files where I know for a fact it appears within the document
or as it's author.

No, "advanced" search isn't very advanced.

Limiting the search to what appears in the actual file name produces
better results. I have close to a million photos. If I search for
Bill, I do get hits for Bill, Bill-1, Bill-2, Bill-a, Bill-b, Billy,
Cousin Bill, Uncle Bill and similar variations.
 
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