Windows Vista Team Blog : Windows Vista, search

Searching, part III: Do you know what a SearchMelt is?

Nick White — Mon, 14 May 2007 16:33:00 GMT

Last week we showed you how to make some interesting Search Folders on Windows Vista. If you're like me, you probably can't get enough of them. Today, I want to introduce you to new feature that's a little geeky, but very useful for anyone that has to do a lot of team-based work.

The thing about Search Folders is that while they're pretty handy for an individual, they're not readily shareable. If you actually open a Search Folder in notepad and look at the XML innards, you'll see that Windows Vista automatically scopes the Search Folder to the user profile on the local PC. This prevents me from, say, creating one and sending it to my team.

Introducing Windows Vista SearchMelts

A SearchMelt is a Windows Vista Search Folder that has been changed slightly to be generic and able to be shared. It's like Search + XML + Sharing -- it's a whole bunch of melty goodness!

SearchMelts are easy to share because they are so small, usually on the order of a couple of kilobytes, but they are super-useful to people like me, and to people who need to collaborate on common documents on an on-going basis.

Follow the easy instructions below to create your own SearchMelts, and feel free to share your creations with co-workers or customers.

Creating a Windows Vista Search Folder

Go to the Search Explorer in Windows Vista. TIP: To make this easier to access, if it isn't showing on your Start Menu, you can add Search by right-clicking the Start Orb / Properties / Tick the Start Menu radio button / Customize. On the Customize Start Menu page, scroll down to Search and click the check box to enable it. Click OK to back out. Search will now appear as a menu item on the right side of your Start Menu.
Design a search

Ex.: All PowerPoint documents:

i. * = wildcard
ii. Document = only documents
iii. Filter control = All Office 2007, Office 97-2003 PowerPoints

Save as Search Folder

Turning Your Search Folder into a SearchMelt

Windows Vista does not save Search Folders in a way that is instantly shareable. Normally, when you create a Search Folder, that search is "hard-coded," or scoped, to your PC. So, you need to take an additional step to make them generic so they can be shared with friends, family, customers, anyone.

Copy the SearchMelt Creator to your Saved Searches folder. Your Saved Searches folder can be found in the following way:

Open the Start Menu
Choose the user name, which is the right-hand, top-most entry. This will open the user profile

Find and open the Searches folder. To turn a Search Folder into a SearchMelt, just pick a Search Folder and drag and drop it on top of the SearchMelt Creator.

The SearchMelt Creator is an .exe that will automatically change the scope from your PC to a generic set-up.

That's it!

Note: not every SearchMelt will "just work." If you have a search looking at specific places like an external hard drive on your PC or a private share, even the SearchMelt Creator won’t be able to fix those for you. The best kind of SearchMelt is one that is made from a Search Folder that points to one PC, or to a networked PC or network share to which everyone has access. The SearchMelt creator will only remove user-specific information contained in a Search Folder.

Searching, part II: Using Search Folders

Nick White — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:52:00 GMT

OK, more on searching today. One of Windows Vista's coolest features that I use every day is the Windows Vista Search Folder. The concept is simple: a Search Folder is just a saved search. There's a whole bunch that come with the system at installation; you can find them if you open the Start Menu, select your user name (top right-hand corner of the Start menu), and open the "Searches" folder -- it's the folder with the magnifying glass icon. The other way you can get to your Search Folders is from the navigation pane in any Explorer window. When you have the "Favorite Links" view turned on in the navigation pane in Explorer (versus the "Folders" view), you'll also see a "Searches Folder."

The system natively comes with a number of Search Folders to help get you started. Things like "Files Shared by Me," "Recent Pictures and Videos," and "Recent Documents" are all pretty helpful as defaults. However, I've found that the most useful Search Folders available are the ones that I've created myself.

One set of Search Folders that I cannot live without is my All Word docs, All PPTX, and All XLSX queries. Here's how I went about creating them:

Open the Search Explorer by hitting the Start button and selecting "Search"
Type a "*" in the Search field
Use the Type column to filter the resulting list, choosing all Word docs in both Office 2007 and all pre-Office 2007 formats
Select the option near the top of the window that says "Save Search"

When you combine Search Folders with the Advanced Query Operators that we showed you yesterday, the sky's the limit on getting the most out of Windows Vista's built-in search technology.

Putting advanced searches to work for you

Nick White — Wed, 09 May 2007 18:35:00 GMT

A couple of weeks ago we showed you some of the more popular keyboard shortcuts in Windows Vista. Now that you've had a chance to see how shortcuts can speed up your navigation, I thought it would be a good follow-up to show you how to not only speed up your searches, but also make them more relevant to what you're looking for.

Over the next few days we'll introduce you to some of the advanced search operators, show you how to create a Search Folder, and finally introduce you to a new Windows Vista-only search feature: the "SearchMelt."

Here's what you'll see coming as part of our Windows Vista Search tips and tricks:

Basic and Advanced Desktop Search Operators -- these actually work for both Windows Vista and Windows Desktop Search 3.01 on Windows XP. (This list can also be found here, but we've replicated so you can search it using our blog's search engine.)
How to create a Windows Vista Search Folder
How to create a Windows Vista SearchMelt

To start with, check out the latest article on putting search to work for you.