Searching for Files and Folders
Even if you organize your files and folders logically, sooner or later you'll need to find somethingnewly installed software, a download, or a file whose location you forgot, for example. Often, you'll also want to find all files that meet certain criteriaall or part of a filename, approximate size, modification date, type, and so on.
Search Companion
Windows' built-in Search Companion can find printers, people, and other computers on your network. In this section, I describe how to find files and folders.To open Search Companion: On the desktop, choose Start > Search, press F3, or press Windows logo key+F (Figure 5.45 ).
Figure 5.45. The Search Companion occupies the left pane of Windows Explorer, where it replaces the taskbar or Folders bar when visible.

Tips
To widen or narrow the search pane, drag its right edge.To get rid of the animated dog, click the dog itself; then click Turn Off the Animated Character in the menu that appears.Windows veterans prefer the Windows 2000-style interface, which offers the same search options without the hand-holding screens. To invoke it, in Search Companion, choose Change Preferences > Change Files and Folders Search Behavior > Advanced and click OK.To search for a file or folder: 1. In Search Companion, click All Files and Folders (Figure 5.46 ).
Figure 5.46. The initial Search Companion screen offers specialized searches for digital media (MP3s, JPEGs, WMAs, and so on) or documents (no folders and no program, hidden, help, or system files). Each search entails its own default settings and screens. All Files and Folders is the broadest, most versatile search.

Figure 5.47. Each option that you specify narrows the search.

Figure 5.48. You can specify a range of dates when the file was modified, search for files of a specified size, or choose among advanced options. Subfolders and system folders (but not hidden folders) are searched by default.

Figure 5.49. The Search Results list contains files and folders that match the criteria. If Search Companion returns the wrong matches (or no matches or too many matches), use the Refine This Search links to try again with more or less restrictive criteria. (Refine This Search does the
entire search again; it doesn't look in only the current results.)[View full size image]

Tips
Search Companion searches the Recycle Bin too.The results list sometimes contains duplicate entries for files in your My Documents folder.You don't have to wait until a search ends before you open or use a file in the results list.After a search finishes, if you delete a file or folder or change it so that it no longer meets the search criteria, it disappears from the results list automatically (or appears in it if the change meets the criteria).You can use wildcard characters to represent one or more filename characters when you don't know what the real character is or don't want to type the entire name. ? substitutes for any single character, and * substitutes for zero or more characters. Type *.do?, for example, to find all files that end in .doc (Word documents) or .dot (Word templates). chapter*.doc finds all Word documents that begin with the word chapter, followed by any characters (or no characters).Indexing
As described in step 2 of "To search for a file or folder," Search Companion lets you search for text inside files whose contents you remember but whose names you forget. Fortunately, Windows' indexing service accelerates exhaustive string searches (typically by orders of magnitude). Indexing Service, turned off by default, silently and automatically collects information from the documents on your hard drive and compiles a database, or catalog, of file contents. The tradeoff for slashing search time is that Windows must maintain a catalog file that's about 25 percent of the size of the indexed files.To turn on Indexing Service:
- Open Search Companion; then choose Change Preferences > With Indexing Service (for Faster Local Searches), click Yes, Enable Indexing Service, and then click OK (Figure 5.50 ).
Figure 5.50. Indexing Service updates and maintains its indexes automatically, without your intervention. If the service is busy updating itself, Search Companion performs an ordinary, unindexed search. Updates take lots of time and power but occur only when your PC has been idle for a while. (The initial index may take a few hours.)

Tips
Indexing Service indexes only your documents and shared documents. It ignores other users' documents.Indexing Service ignores case. Search Companion can't perform case-sensitive searches with the service running.Indexing Service ignores noise words such as a, the, to, and be , as well as common pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and articles. You can include these words in the search text, but Search Companion treats them as placeholders rather than literal words.By default Indexing Service catalogs text files, HTML files (their text only), Microsoft Office documents (Office 95 and later), and internet email and news. Third-party filters can index other types of files too. Adobe's free IFilter indexes PDF files; download it from the Acrobat for Windows section of www.adobe.com/support/downloads. To find other filters, search for indexing service filters on Google.For advanced indexing, go to http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=317586, "HOW TO: Optimize Indexing Service Performance in Windows 2000."If you turn off Indexing Service (by disabling it in Figure 5.50), the indexes remain intact. Delete the indexes to save disk space if you don't intend to use indexing again.To delete indexes: 1. Choose Start > Control Panel > Performance and Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Services and Applications > Indexing Service.or 1. Choose Start > Run; type ciadv.msc and then press Enter.A list of catalogs appears, showing information such as catalog size in megabytes. Each catalog is a different index; most of the time the list contains only one catalog.2. Right-click the catalog to delete, choose Delete, and then click Yes in the confirmation message.
Other search tools
Exploring Your Computer" earlier in this chapter all have enhanced search features. Some dedicated index-based file finders are blinkx (free; www.blinkx.com), X1 Search ($75 U.S.; www.x1.com), and dtSearch Desktop ($199; www.dtsearch.com).Google Desktop Search (free; http://desktop.google.com) uses Google's internet search technology to provide a full text search over your email, Office documents, chats, text files, and the web pages that you've viewed. After downloading GDS, you can use Google to search your personal items the way you search the internet (Figure 5.51 ). Microsoft's competing tool, MSN Toolbar Suite (free; http://toolbar.msn.com), places individual search boxes within Outlook, Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, and the taskbar. Yahoo! offers a free desktop search tool at http://desktop.yahoo.com.
Figure 5.51. Google Desktop Search stores the index that it creates on your own computer.

Google Desktop Search Risks
Google Desktop Search doesn't make your home computer's content accessible to Google or anyone else, but if you use a public, workplace, or other shared computer for email, instant messaging, or web searches, the people who follow you on the PC can see your information (such as online purchases) in the files that GDS indexed. A multicolored swirl (
) in the taskbar's notification area (system tray) means GDS is running; right-click it to exit the program and prevent it from recording your web, email, and chat sessions.The GDS help page (