I love that search box in the upper-right corner of Explorer windows (you know, Documents, Pictures, etc). Of course, you can type in it to find files by their name or contents, but you can also search by date or several other criteria using Advanced Query Search (AQS).
Let’s say I want to find pictures taken on New Year’s Eve, 2006. I’ll type date:december31, 2006 and press Enter. Windows Vista immediately shows all my files modified on that date.
Then, to limit it to only pictures, I can click Picture on the Show only toolbar.
Instantly, I see all the pictures I took that day. Any of these variations work, too:
- date:today
- date:yesterday
- date:december
- date:dec
- date:tuesday
You can combine this with other criteria. For example, to find text files that I modified today, I can search for date:today *.txt.
AQS goes far beyond just date. Check out these examples:
- genre:rock. Find all music with a Genre defined as “Rock”.
- Artist:”Beastie Boys“. Find all your Beastie Boys songs.
- conductor:”Gerard Schwartz”. Find everything on your computer that Gerard Schwartz conducted.
Like Google, you can use a minus symbol to exclude something (or the keyword NOT). For example:
- genre:rock -wait. Find all rock songs, except a song named Wait or songs by an artist named wait.
- date:today *.txt -cookies. Find all text files modified today except files named Cookies.
“OR” works as well, if you want to search by multiple criteria. If you have other good examples, please add a comment.
