Advanced search techniques

re: Advanced search techniques

sohbet — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:19:17 GMT

video klip izle chat yap sohbet et.

re: Advanced search techniques

TomCon — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:58:23 GMT

I've read many of the comments. I agree that Vista serach is a step BACKWARDS from what we had in XP.

I have a simple question. How, in Vista, can you search for a specific string. Simple enough. Searching just in file NAMES, i have these files:

hello.txt

_hello.txt

hello_.txt

If i enter in serach - hello result-> finds all 3 (good)

if i enter in serach - hello_ result -> finds all 3 (wrong)

if i enter in serach - _hello result -> finds all 3 (wrong)

if i enter in search - (hello -result -> find all 3 (TOTALLY WRONG and PERPLEXING).

note, uisng "" around the search term does not help.

note using \ before characters does not help

SO HELP???

How do i simply use search to EXACTLY match text characters.

Does Vista search not do this???

CAN ANYBODY tell me how to do this? Match only what i type in the serach box, not other random stuff?

Thanks,

tom

Vista search anomalies | keyongtech

Vista search anomalies | keyongtech — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:03:01 GMT

Pingback from Vista search anomalies | keyongtech

re: Advanced search techniques

Isara — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:05:20 GMT

Man, oh man oh man am I frustrated.

I'm trying to search simple strings on a networked folder. In XP, all I needed to do was search the filenames for "81-1" (for example, no quotes) and it would bring up all of the files which began with 81-1 (81-1.jpg, 81-1_1.jpg, 81-12.jpg, etc.). Worked beautifully.

In Vista, searching 81-1 (with quotes, without quotes, as filename:81-1, etc) brings up a ton of crap, including my 81-1 files:

The good:

81-1.jpg

81-1_1.jpg

The bad and ugly:

81-12-8_ARC3_ARC19.jpg

2007-0-81a_1.jpg

lib91-18-81_2.jpg

81-64-19.jpg

all of these filenames (along with many, many more) come up in my search.

How can I search for a simple string - and only a simple string - in a series of folders and subfolders in a non-indexed networked directory.

search not finding partial phrases | keyongtech

search not finding partial phrases | keyongtech — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 16:24:28 GMT

Pingback from search not finding partial phrases | keyongtech

Worth noting today | Trader Eyal

Worth noting today | Trader Eyal — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:01:09 GMT

Pingback from Worth noting today | Trader Eyal

re: Advanced search techniques

Jimantha — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:35:49 GMT

Hi everyone,

I've had a lot of frustration with Vista's search capabilities as well. What I've found makes search more reliable is, from the advanced search pane, to click Search Tools -> Search Options..., then select "Don't use the index when searching the file system (might be slow)." It is indeed slow, but I'd rather wait for a good answer than get a bad answer quickly.

- Jimmy

re: Advanced search techniques

Sunflower34 — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:44:17 GMT

I can't get "right click" in Windows Explorer to give an option for Agent Ransack on a Vista 64 bit PC. I've looked in the registry and cannot find anything obvious to explain what might be missing/needed. I've uninstalled and re-installed Agent Ransack several times and that didn't help.

I wanted to buy a new Windows XP machine but in a moment of weakness when the Vista machine had more memory and was cheaper, I agreed to buy Vista 64 bit. Now I vave a huge and powerful machine, but search is absolutely worthless from Microsoft, and crippled from Agent Ransack.

Maybe the next PC-Apple commercial could hightlight that Vista machines can store files, but they don't give reasonable ways to search for files. THIS IS TOTALLY FRUSTRATING, MICROSOFT -- THE PROBLEM IS NOW ALMOST TWO YEARS OLD. WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN TO PAYING CUSTOMERS?

re: Advanced search techniques

tltester — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:39:15 GMT

hi,

i just took the effort to join so that i could express my complete and total disatisfaction with the functionality and performance of windows vista. As well as being the slowest system hog that i've ever had the misfortune to have to use i find that performing even the simplest of tasks is now a trial. For example searching a dvd for files when the provided box is only interested in searching the "current view". I mean, that's not likely to be the major requirement is it, to search a small list of files. I don't know what you think of your customers but i'm presuming not much. So for your information, i can manage to tell whether the file i need is in the current folder i'm viewing what i need is a search function that wiol check subfolders and files without requiring me to stand on one leg and stick bill gates up my arse.

re: Advanced search techniques

morvi — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:27:29 GMT

Great post - is a pity it took me 5 month before I get to read it.

Vista search is a good feature but ... is A) VERY BAD DESIGNED B) VERY BAD IMPLEMENTED! C) AND NOT MUCH NEEDED.

A) VERY BAD DESIGNED :

An easy set of "tick boxes" or radio buttons is a must

This Folder only [ ] Include Subfolder [ ]

This Hard drive [ ] All hard drives [ ] .. etc

File Name [ ] Full Document [ ]

File types [ ] All files [ ]

... or Classic search [ ] (DEFAULT) new search [ ]

B) VERY BAD IMPLEMENTED!

Pretends to be an exhaustive search but ... The limitations are not explained - at all

e.g. for several week I thought that I have lost many files while transferring fro my old PC - only to realise later that they were not lost, just not indexed - I have several hard drives and only some of them where indexed.

You should alert when you are searching in a hard drive or folder that is not indexed. (Oups! I realised that now you cannot search in a particular folder without expanding a few hours understanding the list of options in this post)

(I wont go the all the other problems presented in this post)

C) AND NOT MUCH NEEDED

Unless MS needs to prove that they can do like Google - the file search in XP etc was perfectly good for most users

Try to explain to my mother the long list of option in this post!

In any case thanks to keep responding to this blog.

re: Advanced search techniques

Etherman — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:15:33 GMT

I agree with everything sunflower34 and others have said.

Search in Windows NT 4 and 2000 used to work perfectly. I never figured out how to get XP search to give me results I could believe. The only way to find files containing certain text was to use Delphi's "Find in Files" menu option, which simply does what a lot of the people here want: just iterate through all the files matching a ceraing file mask (like *.pas) and then open each of the files and look for the search text. I don't care how long it takes. Just do the search. Any time saved by the so-called optimizations of the indexing service are lost if it doesn't even bother to look in all the files. My hard drive and computer are so fast that the time it takes to searcg for text is not exactly a critical factor.

Vista is now even worse. The interface has been dumbed down, understandibly to appeal to the mass-market who are probably only interested in Word, Excel and Email documents or photographs. That's fine for those people, but why can't you just keep the simple original brute force options available in the "advanced" options?

As a software developer I have to search for stuff every day, but I never need anything any more complicated than "look for this bit of text in all those files there". That's a really, really simple task that simply cannot be done in Vista without getting really, really angry. I'm not interested in keywords and semi-colons and "intuitive" search features or registry settings. I just want to select a folder, type in a filemask and enter a search text. Simple. Out-of the box in Vista this simple does not work.

I actually like most of Windows and I'm not a big fan of loading my system full of (often dubious) third-party tools to perform a bunch of basic, simple tasks. There's just a bunch of "improvements" that seem to be targeted towards the mass-market point-and-click drones who don't know any better. The coding required to povide a few checkboxes in the "advanced" options to give us these original features back, that existed in Windows 2000, is so rediculously trivial which makes it even more frustrating.

There are other features that are in the same league as Searching: absolutely no idea how to control the view/columns in file listings; the fact that there is no way to manually tune a TV station in Media Centre (because it is assumed that the maintream all have access to digital media guides, I suppose it is also assumed the rest of us are too backwards to be using Media Centre so no need for manual tuning. Every TV I owned had one little button called "Auto-Tune" that automatically tuned every available station for me, but not Media Centre - I had to go and type some long number into an undocumented XML file to get it to tune to my station.); Explorer window vanishes because I was dumb enough to eject the DVD before clicking on a different node in the tree; "Cannot stop the device because some unknown, un-detectable, program is still accessing the device and Windows cannot tell me what it is and actually I don't believe it anyway because it still tells me it's being accessed even after I go into task Manager and kill everything."

That last one will give a lot of people a nice little chuckle. It also led me to disabling the indexing service which has had no noticable impact on the search (in)capabilities of my Vista installation.

The point of my ramblings is: yes go ahead and add new fatures. I can see the value of progressing the OS and adding in fancy new features - but please don't throw away useful features just because they don't seem important to the mainstream audience. Hide it behind a checkbox somewhere if you have to, don't just get rid of it. The overly complicated array of folder types and columns may suit the novice who just wants to work with family photos, but developers like me are desperate to just disable all that rubbish and have a simple consistent column selection used everywhere - like we had in XP. Again, we get all this fancy new functionality that stomps on and replaces the nice comfortable settings we could rely on in XP. All it needs is a little checkbox somewhere.

Most of the people being annoyed by these things seem to be the developers - be careful not to annoy them because they may start developing on other platforms!

I hope these things are being considered in the next release of Windows?

re: Advanced search techniques

skydiver — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 10:15:20 GMT

It is good to see I'm not the only one furious with Microsoft. I read through all of the posts and have downloaded Agent Ransack which is great. Most disturbing is how Nick has ignored the site users whom he doesn't appear to like.

I just accepted a position as a Master Black Belt with Microsoft in their Continuous Improvement program. I am requesting as my first project improving this teams response to customer issues. Having done CI for over a decade I fully expect some people to be "reassigned" as a improvement to this process. It won't fix the search function issue but hopefully it will make this process more customer focused and responsive. See you soon Nick!

re: Advanced search techniques

Seykela — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:20:49 GMT

How can you search only top level of the selected directory?

The situation is as follows: I have n directories, and I want all top-level files and folders in them to be shown in one virtual folder, but content of their subfolders must not be shown. In other words I want to merge them visually.

For example. There are two directories: "c:\one" and "c:\two". I make search folder for them and it shows:

"c:\one\top"

"c:\one\top\.."

"c:\one\top\..\.."

"c:\two\top"

"c:\two\top\.."

"c:\two\top\..\.."

And I need only:

"c:\one\top"

"c:\two\top"

The only possible solution which I have found - manually exclude every first-level subfolder from a search list. But it is ineffective and boring, because you have to change exclusions list every time you add or delete subfolders... So I need some command to search only first level of directory.

Can you help me, please?

re: Advanced search techniques

dmanus — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:41:41 GMT

I am also here because I'm having a heck of a time finding anything using the search function in windows vista and am a little steamed.

I'm also having trouble following the logic of where programs get installed and the directory tree in general. Is there a neat explanation for these things somewhere? I hate to have to spend more hours reading docs that seem to lead no where.

re: Advanced search techniques

Sunflower34 — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:30:37 GMT

Why can't I search old .pst files in Outlook 2007? How do I force them to be re-indexed? I can't find anything in megabytes of old information because of Vista design flaws?

Going through these old .pst files MANUALLY is a TERRIBLE SEARCH but all that Outlook 2007 provides?

Why does Microsoft continue to ignore Vista search problems?

I want Windows XP or 2000 search back -- when it always worked.