Chapter 11 -- Searching for Files and Folders

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Chapter 11

Scooting around your hard disk or network with Windows Explorer is dandy when you know where you're going. But it's not so good when all you know is "The file is out there." In that all-too-common circumstance, you'll want to use the Microsoft Windows 2000 versatile Search Assistant.

The Search Assistant can quickly locate documents, programs, and folders anywhere on your own computer or amongst the shared resources of your network. You can find what you're looking for by name, creation date, size, file type, content, or any combination of these. For example, you can ask the Search Assistant to locate all Microsoft Excel documents created within the last month that are at least 30 MB in size and contain the word xenon. Or you can use it to generate a list of all programs on a particular server. Or find all files that are larger than 100 KB and haven't been modified during the last six months. And so on.

NOTE
The Search Assistant can do much more than find files and folders. You can also use it to find computers and printers on your network, and to find people and Web sites on the Internet. For finding computers, see "Searching for Computers;" for finding printers, see "Finding Printers on the Network;" for finding people, see "Finding People;" and for finding Web sites, see "Using Search to Find New Sites."

Some of your programs might also attach themselves to the Search Assistant. If you use Microsoft Outlook, for example, you'll see an entry in the Search menu tailored for that program. You can use the Using Microsoft Outlook command to find items in one of your Outlook folders. (Be aware that program-specific entries on the Search menu invoke program-specific search engines. These might or might not work the same way as the Windows 2000 search tools described in this chapter.)

TIP
The Search Assistant can't locate e-mail messages stored in Outlook Express. To find such messages, use the Find tools in Outlook Express.

After you have performed a Search operation, if you leave the Search window open, Search continues rechecking the disks or folders it searched originally to see whether any new items have appeared that match your search criteria. Thus, you can use it to keep a more or less constant eye on a network server and alert you when particular files have arrived on that server. You can also take advantage of the Save Search command to make a set of search criteria easily reusable (as described in the last section of this chapter).



Running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Running Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
ISBN: 1572318384
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2000
Pages: 317

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