File Explorer turned up nothing, but using the Photos search box at the top of the app I was able to turn up several related photos. As a test, I searched my Photos folder on OneDrive via File Explorer for any photos of “Las Vegas”-home to many CES trade shows over the years. Here, Windows Search isn’t helpful, but the Photos app is, sort of. But how do you find a specific photo years after the fact? Most of us take photos with our smartphones, possibly edit them, possibly post them to social media-and never look at them again. Photos: Yes, it can be used for search, too The preview pane’s default size is small enough that you’ll likely have to open the document to use it, but you can at least get an idea of whether it’s the document you were looking for. The search options are there to refine that search, with intuitive options that include “kind” (email, journal, task, picture, and many more), and whether the file exists in a subfolder, a compressed folder, an entirely different folder, and more.įile Explorer also has the advantage of an optional preview pane, by which you can get a look at a photo, PDF file, or document without needing to technically open it. Weirdly, however, that menu only seems to materialize after you’ve typed in a search term inside the search box. Here, you can choose which file types are indexed, as well as how they’re indexed-either by the file name alone, or by the file name and the contents.įinally, File Explorer offers what some of you may have been looking for all along: a detailed “search options” menu right in the center of the screen. But there’s even another layer: this Control Panel app allows access to “Advanced” controls. Selecting the “Advanced indexing options” inside the Searching Windows Settings panel reveals that some apps send files to the index by default: Outlook and OneNote, for example, index files by default to speed up searches. It will be a bit more if you’re indexing smaller files or computer code. The size of the index depends, of course, on what files are actually indexed Microsoft’s support page explains that the index will be about a tenth the size or less of the total space those files take up. Note that Windows makes some intelligent decisions about what to store, even with “enhanced” mode turned on. (Indexing can take several hours to compete when first run, but will turn briefly on and off as you make changes to your PC.) The same control panel also allows you to manually exclude certain folders, in case there are folders with confidential information you don’t want to surface, or for some other reason. The same control menu allows you to essentially turn off indexing while on battery to save power. A small tally in the upper right-hand corner will tick up and down as Windows finds new files, then indexes them. Windows is pretty intelligent about how and when it indexes, so the process will take a while. The search indexing controls within Windows 11. Microsoft obviously feels that most users won’t use Search at all, but the disconnect-recent apps in one section, recent documents in another-still feels unnatural. None of this feels especially personalized, especially when you consider that any recent documents aren’t found in Search at all those are listed under the Recommended section within the Start menu, instead. Remember, some users launch apps simply by searching for them. The basic Windows search presents itself each time you click the Search icon: On the left you’ll find a column of recently searched-for apps on the right, you’ll see Windows’ guesses at some searches it thinks you’ll be interested in, plus some Top apps that presumably many users search for. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to ignore that search box and focus on how to optimize searches for files on your PC, instead. This search box searches only the web, and won’t find the files on your PC that you’re looking for. The one search box you shouldn’t use is the search box at the top of the Widgets panel on Windows 11, and the similar location on Windows 10. On Windows 11, Windows Search can be accessed from the Taskbar.
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