Comments

1. jhester

   
   Posted on: August 28, 2007 at 9:30AM  

   Nick,

   I son't want to come across as hostile or angry, but I do agree with the point that others have made about the new search capabilities.  As designed, I simply don't find them trust worthy.  You seem to have sacrificed speed for dependability and usability.  I know that you guys are focused on the new and sexy thing, and you're trying to compete with others, but this new search is not a step in the right direction because you have ignored your bread and butter clients who want a no nonsense search.

   I could select the type of search that gave me the control.  I didn't have to allow you to guess whether a file was a document or music or whatever.  I could type in *.* and get EVERY file on my system if I wanted to.  I had control.  I do not like the new interfaces that seize control for the sake of making it more usable for those who are not very savvy.

   I don't want to have to familiarize myself with a bunch of nuances (your word) that you have added to the search.  Actually I wouldn't mind if I thought it would work, but so far my experience with your search is that it is wildly unreliable.  I never know what might appear when I type something in the search box.  For example.  I just searched for something and the only thing that appeared were emails!  Who knows what I did to trigger the system to decide that my context or whatever was email.  I  wasn't even running an email program.

   Essentially you are forcing us to give up on your search capabilities.  This translates into your customers testifying to others that for all practicle purposes Vista lacks any functional search capability.  You should be more concerned about this problem than your responses indicate.  You've got a BIG problem for those of us who actually need to search for files.

   My experience is that most people who use PCs have never even tried to search for stuff on their PC so they won't care, but you've given the rest of us one more reason to start exploring alternative operating systems, and isn't that EXACTLY what Microsoft is trying to avoid with its attempt to revamp the search capability in the first place?

   Maybe I'm wrong about the capabilities.  Maybe you can give me a command that will not try to second guess what I am looking for and just search for whatever the heck I tell it to search for.  If so, can you tell me where that command is?
2. jhester

   
   Posted on: August 28, 2007 at 9:34AM  

   corrections to previous post  (I'm so frustrated I can't even think straight!;):

   I don't want to come across as hostile or angry, but I do agree with the point that others have made about the new search capabilities.  As designed, I simply don't find them trust worthy.  You seem to have sacrificed dependability for speed and usability.
3. jhester

   
   Posted on: August 31, 2007 at 7:59AM  

   Okay here's an example of my problem.  I tried the same search on both of my machines (one XP one Vista).  I searched for a document that is on the hard drive of my XP machine and on a plugged in flash drive of my Vista machine.

   On XP I typed *.doc in one field and "reasonably intelligent" in the contents field.  It took it about 3 minutes to find the file.

   On Vista I typed *.doc reasonably intelligent in the start search field: immediately it said "no items match your search."  This statement is inaccurate.  If it cannot find a match through it quick process then it should continue searching rather than tell me that there are no matches.  Saying, "no items match your search" indicate that it is finished searching, and it is telling me definitively that such a document does not exist.

   The odd thing is that if I remove the contents qualifier, and simply search for "*.doc" then the document that contains "reasonably intelligent" appears in the list!

   From the start menu I click "search everywhere."  I take this as a clue that perhaps Vista did not actually search everywhere the first time-which I find to be a bizaar possibility.  I cannot understand why from the start screen you would decide to tease your users:  "Oh yes I know you want me to search for this file, but I think I will just look in a few places rather than everywhere because I'm just obnoxious that way!"  Dude, when I use the "search" function it because I don't know where something is, right?  If I don't know where it is, then I want you to search everywhere for it.

   At any rate, the search pane appears.  It's not obvious what one should do differently with this, so I decided to select advanced search.  I then point to my flash drive, to give it a little help.  (In my case I DO know where this file is and I am just testing Vista!)  Even then it comes up with nothing.  I click on "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files(might be slow)."  It ain't slow; it immediately tells me the same thing: "no items match your search."

   At this point I want to swear off your new search capabilities, and frankly I begin to wonder what else did Microsoft bungle in its new Vista design.

   The point of this post is not to vent but to give you details of my experience so that perhaps you can either tell me what I did wrong or tell me that there is indeed a problem that Microsoft will address or tell me that this is the way the designers want the search to work and I should expect the same sort of logic applied to other features in Vista.
4. Jim

   
   Posted on: August 31, 2007 at 8:28PM  

   Hi Nick, thanks for your description of the search query language -- it works well for me. (As mentioned by someone earlier, it'd be handy if there were a link from the advanced search pane to a description of the search query language).

   Here's my question:  I've created a multi-phrase search and saved it (so the file name is foo.search-ms); by multi-phrase, I mean it has query terms connected by AND's and/or OR's.  It works.  Now I want to change this saved search's query slightly.  How do I do that?  I can't even figure out how to display the saved search query in Windows Explorer (I can do it using SendTo->Notepad, but that just gives me an XML file).

   In summary:  How do I view and edit the query of saved searches?

   I'm using Home Premium and Classic view.

   Also, a lesser concern:  It'd be nice if Explorer treated a saved search more like a folder, eg., right-clicking on it would bring up appropriate folder operations, such as Properties giving the number of files and sum of sizes of the files.  In general, it'd be nice if saved searches were more like folders, ie., if they were virtual folders.  Then view templates, etc would work on search results too.  Also, then I would be able to give Microsoft's Photos screensaver, when it asks for a folder root, a saved search as its input (a perfect application of a saved search!).
5. Frankiee

   
   Posted on: September 07, 2007 at 3:19AM  

   I know this might not be the place to ask this question but maybe some of might be able to help me?

   My search is working fine as long as I don't click on "Show only E-Mail". Then zero results will be displayed although all the e-mails are displaying when don't filter the "all" results.

   Why could this be?
6. Lars

   
   Posted on: September 16, 2007 at 2:24PM  

   Here is a clue regarding why it seems that “Vista Search” is not working as expected.

   I’m using the Norwegian version of Vista Ultimate.

   I created 24 folders and files with Lars77 as part of the name. Two files and one folder were marked as hidden.

   By using the command line “cmd /b /s *Lars77*” 21 files was found and using “cmd /b /s /ah *Lars77*” the remaining 3 files was found.

   In the Search Explorer (Start|Search) I used the following: Location “Everywhere”, selected “All” for type of files, selected "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files", and entered “*Lars77*” in the Instant Search box.  8 files was found, among them 1 hidden folder and 2 hidden files.

   Then, in the Search Explorer window: “Organize” -> “Folder and search options” -> “Folder Options” window -> “View” -> “Advanced settings”, I deselected the “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” option. After clicking the “OK” button, the window closed, and the search started over again – to find 24 files...  

   Nick, is this by design? As long as hiding protected operating system files is recommended, I don’t find it intuitive to have this option deselected.

   In the “Folder Options” window -> “View” -> “Advanced settings”, you can select either “Do not show hidden files and folders” or “Show hidden files and folders”.  Both options will list hidden files. Is this by design as well?

   This test was run from the standard user that created the folders and files, from another standard user (which found all files except those placed under the file structure for the user that created the folders and files), and from an admin user (found 24 files).

   An annoying “feature” experienced by deselecting the “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” option, is that in the user folder (“Lars”) I have a sub-folder named “Dokumenter” (“Documents”) and a non-working link named “Mine dokumenter” (“My documents”).
7. Nick White

   
   Posted on: September 20, 2007 at 2:32PM  

   Hey Lars:  sorry this took some time to get to you, I had to track down the right internal expert to get this information.

   The option in "Folder Options" window -> “View” -> "Advanced settings" is a persistent global setting.  When set to “show” hidden files, hidden files will be visible (grayed-out) when browsing folders as well as in search results.  

   The "include non-indexed, hidden, and system files)" checkbox in the Advanced search pane is a transient setting that persists only for the life of that search and refers only to search results.  If your global setting is already set to "show", then this checkbox will have no effect on hidden files (but will still affect whether or not we search system folders and non-indexed locations).

   Similarly, if the global setting is toggled back to "hide", this checkbox will only have an effect on the current search window, and hidden files will not be visible when browsing other folder locations.

   Hope this helps clarify for you.
8. Lars

   
   Posted on: September 21, 2007 at 12:41PM  

   Thanks.  This clarified some.

   This explains the hidden files issue. It could be discussed if you should be allowed to override the global setting for “Show hidden files” in the search window.

   The "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files" choice is a little bit confusing. It should be broken into three choices. I might want to include non-indexed, but not hidden and system files.  If you in the Folder Options have selected the “Do not show hidden files and folders”, the “Include hidden files” could be disabled as an option.  This is what I as a user would expect.

   Is the files included in “system files” in the "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files" option the same files as are included in the “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” option in the Folder Options Window?  If yes, the “Include system files” option in the advanced search should be enabled only if “Hide protected operating system files” is deselected.

   What you didn’t answer was the “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” issue.  Here is a simple test to demonstrate that something seems wrong is Search:

   Log on as a standard user.

   In the Search Explorer window: “Organize” -> “Folder and search options” -> “Folder Options” window -> “View” -> “Advanced settings”, select the “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” option.

   In your Documents folder, create a new folder (e.g. “Lars77”, and create a document in the new folder (e.g. Lars77.bmp”).

   Run a search. In the Search Explorer window (Start|Search) use the following: Location “Everywhere”, select “All” for type of files, select "Include non-indexed, hidden, and system files", and enter a filename mask (e.g. “*Lars77*”) in the Instant Search box. The folder and the file you created will not be found.  Please explain why!

   In the Search Explorer window: “Organize” -> “Folder and search options” -> “Folder Options” window -> “View” -> “Advanced settings”, deselect the “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” option.

   Run a new search, using the same settings as in the first search. The files are found!

   The files you created seems to be treated as system files…  Please explain why!

   Please explain why I have to deselect the “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” option to find my non-system folders and files under my user folder.
9. wgrahamt

   
   Posted on: September 27, 2007 at 3:07PM  

   Hi Nick,

   I still find that my most frequent search is to want to see all of the email threads I have with any paricular email account or email domain - becasue I want to know what has been said by them and by me in the past, so I can sound intelligent and organised when I speak to them,.  This means that I have to type 'to:<string> OR from:<string>' commands into the search box, for eaxample

      to:lyalla OR from:lyalla

   It doesn't seem to radical a requeat that I would be able type a single command to get all of the emails from a particular addresss (or part-address) something like

       thread:lyalla

   or

       mails:lyalla

   or some such

   The main reason that this is much more productive is that apart from more typing, it is sometimes hard to type a part-address in twice and get the same characters in the right order!
10. Nick White

    
    Posted on: September 27, 2007 at 3:14PM  

    Hey wgrahamt:  this sounds like a great case for Search Folders, which are essentially longstanding virtual locations containing all items relating to a certain set of search criteria.  As items are added to the system, the Indexer places a shortcut to the new relevant items in the appropriate Search Folder for easy retrieval at any time.  Take a look at this article for details:  http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/05/10/searching-part-ii-using-search-folders.aspx.