OfficeTipsAndMethods

One of the more useful ‘little enhancements’ in Windows 7 is the search box at bottom of the Start menu. (Keep in mind that I am writing about my first impressions of Windows 7 after switching from Windows XP Pro. Some of the features mentioned in these articles may well have been introduced with Vista but I skipped Vista and went directly to Windows 7 when it was time for a new operating system and computer.)

The Start Menu search box provides another way to search for your digital content, whether the content you are trying to find is an application (program) or a document (`data`file.) You don’t have to remember the application you used to create the file (if it is a document) or even the full name of what you are looking for. In fact you can even search for a particular phrase.

You will see the search box at the bottom or the start menu, when you click the Start Button. Simply click into the search box and start to type the first few letters of the name of the item you are looking for.

Can’t recall the actual name? All is not lost  as long as you can recall at least part of the name or a distinctive phrase in the document’s content.

Type in what you recall. Windows immediately starts looking for matches in its indexes. The more characters you type, the more refined the search will be.

Here’s an example. I did some work a while ago on a demonstration of the critical path for a project management seminar I facilitate. There were several files involved but I couldn’t recall their exact names. Don’t worry if you don’t know what a critical path is. The point here is that I was able to use the search box to track down the files I needed.

In the graphic, you can see that I typed ‘critical path’ into the search box. Notice how the search utility has returned a list of several documents.

The list includes a folder I created to house the relevant files, an html (web page) file, some Excel files, and two OneNote notebooks which made some reference to my search phrase, ‘critical path.’ Some of the document names include the phrase, ‘critical path.’ Some do not, but somewhere in these documents, the phrase ‘critical path’ appears and so they appear in the list of search results.

In Windows 7 – Libraries, I discussed the virtual explosion in electronic storage capacity. The downside of large storage capacity is that it is easy to save a file one day and then not recall where you located it when you need to work with it several days, weeks, or months later. Try the search box the next time a file eludes you. It will quickly become a valued friend.

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