Search

[alidan]

i used windows xp for a long time, if i know the name of a file i know how to find it easily with search...

I was also able to search for file dimensions.

How do I find the 1920 x 1200 image in Windows 7?
Is there a way to get a more advanced search?

thank you in advance

 

[soundguruman]

I think what you are trying to say is that you want to change the screen resolution to 1920X1200?

 

[sminlal]

Open up an Explorer window and navigate to the folder tree you want to search. For example, if you want to look for all files that have dimensions of 1920 x 1200 anywhere in your "Documents" folder or in any of its subfolders, then navigate to that folder.

In the "search" box in the upper right corner, type (without quotes): "dimensions:1920 x 1200"

 

[alidan]

thank you, I don't know if it works right now as the folder I'm going through has 500,000+ images in it that is heavily fragmented, but it's searching.

I have to ask is there a better method for searching Windows 7 then have to know every parameter like that. In Windows XP I never upgraded the search past that dog just because I found that the first method of searching to be far easier to just pick up and use then the second method.

I just went to a full rhino I have a 1920 x 1080 picture, and it couldn't find.
I tried taking the spaces out, I tried putting a space between the ellipses and 1920, and it just doesn't search for the dimensions.

This is a fresh Windows 7 install is there anything that I don't have installed or turned on that might make it do that.

Again thank you

 

[sminlal]

Just to be sure: you didn't type the quotes into the search box, right?

If it's really a fresh install then it's possible that the picture you tried to find hasn't been indexed yet. If it hasn't been indexed then Search won't find it.

It's also possible that the dimensions are slightly off. Try bringing up the folder that contains the picture in an Explorer window, then right-clicking any of the column headings and adding a "Dimensions" column to the display (you'll have to go into the "More..." section to do this). When you do this, do the correct dimensions show up for that file?

I agree it's a bit annoying that they didn't wrap a better user interface around the capability to search for file attributes. But you'll find that you can search for basically any attribute that you can choose to display as a column in the Explorer window using similar syntax. It's not intuitive, but once you know how to do it the search engine is quite powerful.

Here's some more info: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Advanced-tips-for-searching-in-Windows

 

[alidan]

no i didn't type the quotes.

and i don't have anything indexed, at all... should i turn that on? and how do i go about that?

i also have an ssd as boot, the reason i went over to windows 7, should i index that too... even though i'm not planning to install, or even save any non boot material on it?

 

[sminlal]

The indexing service will automatically index everything in the background unless you specifically turn it off. Depending on the volume of data, it could take several days to index it all. The service deliberately runs at a low priority so as not to interfere with other work.

You can check to see if it's running by running Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), clicking the "Services" tab, and looking for "Windows Search" in the description column. If the "status" is "running", then your disks will be indexed.

You can tell if indexing is complete by:

- Click "Start", type "search" into the "search" box and click the "Change how Windows searches" link. If indexing is done, then it will say "Indexing complete" near the top of the dialogue box.

You can use the same dialogue box to choose which folders (and therefore which drives) to index.

Some people disable the indexing service if the OS drive is on an SSD because they want to minimize writes to the drive (the index is on the OS drive by default). But you don't really have to do that - if you want to avoid having the index on the SSD then you can simply reconfigure Windows so that it writes it to one of your hard drives (of course if you do that then searches will be a little slower).

If you want to put the index onto a hard drive, then bring up the Indexing Options dialogue box as described above and click the "Advanced..." button. The bottom section of the "Advanced Options" dialogue lets you change the location of the index. Note, though, that if you change the index location then the Search service will have to start all over again to index your files.

 

[alidan]

I think Intel SSD software turned indexing off on my computer so four of my hard drives were being indexed at all.

okay I was looking through this a bit, and I read some things on Google, but none of it was actually pertaining to newer SSD's most of it was older ones.

Should I keep the indexing on the SSD?
Honestly I'm not planning to use the SSD much more than just the boot drive, so writing to it isn't that big of a deal for me, really all I want to that the drive if nothing else fails on it that the writing should at least last five years, in five years SSD's will probably be a hell of a lot cheaper and significantly faster to the point where I'd be looking to upgrade regardless if that's Intel I have currently Is even close to failing or not.

If indexing keeps writing and writing and writing to the drive to the point where it failed before five years I'm considering moving over to a hard drive.

Also should I index the SSD, seen as the reason why people don't index it is because it's either it's fast enough or because it's writing to it. Realistically it's just reading metadata so if I don't index it it still takes longer than if I had next and is the reason why people don't index an SSD is just because of the wright fail, then that pertains my first question of if it's just indexing on the SSD will last at least five years.

Thank you for the help so far is there way that I can force indexing to be more prominent? It's indexing for hard drives that are not even using right now but it's going slower because I'm using the computer.

 

[alidan]

I have to ask this, is the searching Windows 7 so broken that it can't even function at all without being indexed? I tried to search "Brown" in one of my folders I know that several names in that older and I'm looking up one of the files right away, but the search turned up three files and they were given the same folder they were in subfolders.

Is indexing going to fix this or should I really look for an alternative solution to searching.

 

[sminlal]

I've personally reconfigured the index to be on my hard drive, because I don't search very often and when I do I don't mind waiting a little longer. But it's a personal decision - there's not really all that much writing done to the index unless you're going a lot of changes to your files. I certainly don't think it would be the thing to make or break your chances of having the drive last 5 years.

I don't know this for sure but I think that Search can find unindexed files by name or file attributes (creation date, etc.), but not by metadata that's stored in the file itself (such as image dimensions). It's really the ability to search by file content that makes the index useful.

I'm not aware of any way to boost the search priority of the indexing property. You could boost the CPU priority of service itself, but I doubt that will make a difference since it's not really CPU bound anyway.

 

[alidan]

I don't need indexing boost anymore, you sound it could take days, but it only took one night so that's done.

Happen to know of any alternative search software that'll attach itself to Windows Explorer and would require me to memorize how to spell every single word I want to search for an image, like dimensions was.

 

[sminlal]

You don't really need to memorize the keywords for searching various attributes. You just have to right-click the column headings, select "More...", and look at the names of all the file attributes are. Each name you see in list of possible columns is a keyword you can search on.

I'm not familiar with any other general-purpose search tools that can search for attributes in arbitrary document types (acrobat, spreadsheets, photos, movies, etc), but there lots of tools for organizing and searching photos. I personally use ThumbsPlus, but that's a paid product. You might check out the free-for-home-use FastStone viewer - I haven't used it but I'd be pretty surprised if it didn't include search functionality.

 

[alidan]

the layover in thumbsplus, at least I can see from the webpage looks a lot like acdsee. I screw around with pictures enough that pay products can become a viable option for me. Him and to see if there's a more user-friendly search second dock itself in the Windows Explorer.

And I'm also sorry for any of the weird things I said… I just got a new microphone to Dragon for Christmas and that I've been using the right all this with. It's still learning my speech and I'm not able to see everything and sometimes stuff gets through.

Again thank you.

 

[sminlal]

You're welcome!

 

[mibix19]

Hi. Have a look at this search tool. It is free and very quick

 

[alidan]

either I'm not seeing it or something is being blocked in chrome. Did you post the link…

And thanks in advance

 

[mibix19]

Sorry. Here is the link http://www.voidtools.com/