Searching in Win7 is not better than Vista

By latabar
in Microsoft (Windows)

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Apprentice

latabar

Posted
Posted

Searching in Win7 seems to work even worse than in Vista

Suppose I search for a file named ABC, but only remmember BC

Win7 cannot find it !!

Even if I search ABC , Win7 will return a list with lots of irrelevant results !

So I will have to pick out the gem from the garbage.

Guest xiphi

Posted
Posted

From my experience, 7's search has been a lot better.

Say I have 2 files. One named "thisisatest.txt", the other "This is a test.txt" with both having the text "Will this work?"

1. Search for "this" and both files will show.

2. Search for "test" and only "This is a test.txt" will show.

3. Search for "work" and both files will show.

Works as expected, and provides accurate results. Now, do you know why "thisisatest.txt" was not included in the results of test #2? It won't look for words embedded within a word, but it will look for results starting with the search term. Which is why test #1 was able to find both files and not #2. Sure, it could look within a word, but most people look for the beginning of the file name. So, search works in the same way.

Troll is fail troll.

You have to set up indexing before 7 can do anything with it's searching.

Um, no setup is required.

Grand Master

hdood

Posted
Posted
Troll is fail troll.

You have to set up indexing before 7 can do anything with it's searching.

Nope, not at all. Search does not require indexing, that's just a feature that makes searching faster. Instead of calling him a troll, how about answering his actual question?

The actual answer is that if you want to search for partial words, you have to use a star. Type in *BC and it will find 123ABCDE.

Guest xiphi

Posted
Posted
Nope, not at all. Search does not require indexing, that's just a feature that makes searching faster. Instead of calling him a troll, how about answering his actual question?

The actual answer is that if you want to search for partial words, you have to use a star. Type in *BC and it will find 123ABCDE.

+1 to using wildcards. Totally forgot about that.

Grand Master

XerXis

Posted
Posted
Nope, not at all. Search does not require indexing, that's just a feature that makes searching faster. Instead of calling him a troll, how about answering his actual question?

The actual answer is that if you want to search for partial words, you have to use a star. Type in *BC and it will find 123ABCDE.

There's just something suspicious about one post wonders coming in here with a wild rant about some new software. The rant doesn't contain a question in any form and seems like just another microsoft bash. Now if he really came in here expecting an answer to his "question" than I apologize. But something tells me we will never hear of this latabar again. If we do, he needs to learn some manners ;)

Grand Master

hdood

Posted
Posted
There's just something suspicious about one post wonders coming in here with a wild rant about some new software. The rant doesn't contain a question in any form and seems like just another microsoft bash. Now if he really came in here expecting an answer to his "question" than I apologize. But something tells me we will never hear of this latabar again. If we do, he needs to learn some manners ;)

Well I read it as someone whose first language is probably not English being upset about the search not working as one might expect and wondering how to make it go. It's not an unreasonable complaint, as I think most people would expect it to do partial word matches by default. Now he knows how to do it and everyone is presumably happy.

Experienced

bryonhowley

Posted
Posted
since this thread is about searching, how do I search through hidden files and folders? in windows xp you can just select that option but in windows 7 its nowhere to be seen.

From explorer click Organize >> Folder and Search Options

post-8011-1258456038_thumb.jpg

Grand Master

still1

Posted
Posted
Nope, not at all. Search does not require indexing, that's just a feature that makes searching faster. Instead of calling him a troll, how about answering his actual question?

The actual answer is that if you want to search for partial words, you have to use a star. Type in *BC and it will find 123ABCDE.

+1 but the the search should work without the wildcard and it has worked for me.... I will test it when i get back home....

Grand Master

hdood

Posted
Posted
+1 but the the search should work without the wildcard and it has worked for me.... I will test it when i get back home....

If you don't use wildcards then it will only match the beginning of words. In other words, 123 will match the file Xyz 123.jpg or Xyz_123.jpg, but not Xyz123.jpg. It's somewhat confusing.

Apprentice

latabar

Posted
  • Author
Posted

OK sir, that worked.

But what if I want to search only file names ? or only content ?

By the way: is there a button so I quickly can find my topics immediately on entering this site ? or perhaps get a message on my mail ?

From my experience, 7's search has been a lot better.

Say I have 2 files. One named "thisisatest.txt", the other "This is a test.txt" with both having the text "Will this work?"

1. Search for "this" and both files will show.

2. Search for "test" and only "This is a test.txt" will show.

3. Search for "work" and both files will show.

Works as expected, and provides accurate results. Now, do you know why "thisisatest.txt" was not included in the results of test #2? It won't look for words embedded within a word, but it will look for results starting with the search term. Which is why test #1 was able to find both files and not #2. Sure, it could look within a word, but most people look for the beginning of the file name. So, search works in the same way.

Um, no setup is required.

Guest xiphi

Posted
Posted
OK sir, that worked.

But what if I want to search only file names ? or only content ?

By the way: is there a button so I quickly can find my topics immediately on entering this site ? or perhaps get a message on my mail ?

You should already get e-mails of replies to your topic or posts.

Anyway, here's a list of search syntax's you might find handy: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/...s/advquery.mspx

Experienced

MistaT40

Posted
Posted

Search in Win 7 is much better than Vista.

Does anyone know though if you can search network drives on Win 7 without installing that UNCsomething patch in Vista (to be able to automatically search in mapped network drives)?

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted
+1 but the the search should work without the wildcard and it has worked for me.... I will test it when i get back home....

Search does prefix matching by default. This is far and away the most common design for fairly obvious reasons. Google and everyone else does the same thing. You don't want a search for "rum" to return a hit against the word "forum." The signal-to-noise ratio becomes just appalling. Plus we return results as you type, so you're usually searching against the first few letters of the word or phrase you're typing.

If there is a word breaking character like a space, hyphen, period, etc - then of course you can match against the beginning of the next word.

Search in Win 7 is much better than Vista.

Does anyone know though if you can search network drives on Win 7 without installing that UNCsomething patch in Vista (to be able to automatically search in mapped network drives)?

You can search them using the normal "grep" (i.e. slow) search if they aren't indexed. If they are indexed on the server side, Windows 7 (and Vista) will use the remote machine's index automatically.

Grand Master

Fraud OS 11

Posted
Posted

Why can I not find a file or subfolder under say e.g. AppData even if I've turned on hidden and system files and checked "Include subfolders in search results..."??, "Include system dirs and compressed files" I had to check "Dont use the index when searching in file folders for system files" for it to find non-indexed files properly. Indexed search is great. Real time search is a total disaster and definitely slower to the search in XP and sometimes ends up without finding files (I think especially if they are several folder levels deep). And even after dozens of complaints that we need a more comprehensive UI for building advanced searches, Windows 7 comes along and removes the advanced Vista UI and moves bits and portions of it to a search box dropdown. We need a separate classic fast real time search as well like this and sadly Windows Search doesn't live up to the real-time part since it tries to do indexed and non-indexed simultaneously which makes it slow.

Grand Master

Brandon Live Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

So wait, you want them to show up when searching but not when browsing?

Generally "hidden files" are files you don't want to see, like random configuration or log files, temporary files, etc. What are you trying to use them for that the current show/hide option doesn't enable?

Grand Master

(Spork)

Posted
Posted
Searching in Win7 seems to work even worse than in Vista

Suppose I search for a file named ABC, but only remmember BC

Win7 cannot find it !!

Even if I search ABC , Win7 will return a list with lots of irrelevant results !

So I will have to pick out the gem from the garbage.

troll force is weak with in this one

Grand Master

Udedenkz

Posted
Posted
Why can I not find a file or subfolder under say e.g. AppData even if I've turned on hidden and system files and checked "Include subfolders in search results..."??, "Include system dirs and compressed files" I had to check "Dont use the index when searching in file folders for system files" for it to find non-indexed files properly. Indexed search is great. Real time search is a total disaster and definitely slower to the search in XP and sometimes ends up without finding files (I think especially if they are several folder levels deep). And even after dozens of complaints that we need a more comprehensive UI for building advanced searches, Windows 7 comes along and removes the advanced Vista UI and moves bits and portions of it to a search box dropdown. We need a separate classic fast real time search as well like this and sadly Windows Search doesn't live up to the real-time part since it tries to do indexed and non-indexed simultaneously which makes it slow.

This and also remove the nagger "this drive is not indexed plz index it" thing. It is annoying.

Classic Search is best feature that M$ removed >:(

Guest xiphi

Posted
Posted
This and also remove the nagger "this drive is not indexed plz index it" thing. It is annoying.

So, you'd rather a user wonder why searches are fast in one folder, and slow in others? Sounds like a good idea to me! :rolleyes: Please, next time you have a thought, let it go.

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