I talked about the Search features in Windows Vista a couple of weeks ago. We had just barely scratched the surface when it comes to search in Vista at that time.

In this article, I will talk about a few of the less obvious search enhancements available in Vista, which however are far more powerful and useful.

Probably the one of the more obvious features is the "Search Explorer". This tool is accessed from the Start Menu as shown in the picture below. Clicking this launches a window which allows you to search your entire computer from one place. It allows you to filter your search by document type (Email, Picture, Music, etc.)

When you want to do a little more digging around you computer than this is the place to go to as most other places to search in Vista are context sensitive.

The second feature can be accessed from the Search Explorer as well. It is probably one of the most powerful search features available. It’s called "Search Folders".

Search Folders allow you to save your searches into folder representations. When you save a search, it becomes available as a folder and every time you open such a folder, the files are dynamically added to this folder by running a search at that very instant using the search parameters that you had saved. This is great for organizing your data into virtual folders.

To save a search, you can either click the Save Search button in the Search Explorer upon which it will allow you to create a Search Folder with the current search criteria in the Search Explorer. The other way to save a search is through the File Menu. (Note: if you can’t see your File menu, just press Alt once).

The last but not the least of these advanced features is called Meta Data. Windows Vista allows you to specify Meta Data for a large number of document types. You can add tags, date information, etc. to a file. And this meta data can then be searched for in the future. To add Meta data to a file, click on it; this will cause a preview to be shown in the bottom of the Explorer window. There you can edit the fields and save them.

Now, go forth and search.