Working with File Properties

Taking a wild guess, I’d say there’s somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 different types of files you can put on a PC. No one person needs them all or uses them all. Some are so esoteric you might never come across one. Some of those many different file types support the use of properties, some don’t.

Viewing properties sheets

Here’s another way to view a file’s properties: Right-click its icon and choose Properties. Or, if the file’s icon is already selected and its properties are visible in the Details pane, click Edit in the Details pane. A dialog box opens. If that dialog box has a Details tab, that’s where you’re most likely to find the kinds of properties you can create and edit. You’ll often hear the term properties sheet used to describe that set of properties, because it’s kind of like a sheet of paper on which properties are written. On the right is the properties sheet for a JPEG image. When there are more properties than fit in the box, use the scroll bar at the right side of the box to see others. Every property has a name and a value. The value is some text, date, or number that’s assigned to the property. In the properties sheets, the property names are listed down the left column. The value assigned to each property (if any) appears to the right of the property name.

Editing properties

To change a file’s properties, select its icon. Then make your changes in the Details pane. Or right-click the file’s icon, choose Properties, click the Details tab, and make your changes there. You can change properties for multiple files using the same basic method. You just have to select the icons for the files first. But there is a catch. You’ll be limited to changing properties that all the selected files have in common. This can be a real pain when you’re working with multiple file types. For example, there are many different types of files for storing pictures—JPEG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, and GIF to name a few. The newer file types, JPEG, TIFF, and PNG, offer many properties. The older file types, BMP and GIF, offer relatively few. If you have so many files to which you want to assign new properties, your might consider creating a search that brings similar files together all under one roof, so to speak. For example, click the Start button, choose Search, and click Advanced Search. If you need to include files that aren’t yet in your search index, choose Computer or an appropriate location from the Location button. Then use the Filename box to specify the types of files you want to work with. That brings together all my TIFF, JPEG, and PNG files, and omits any shortcuts (.lnk files). (The .lnk files won’t have many editable properties either.) Perform the search and then use column headings to sort items based on their current folder location. You can also add columns that allow you to see the properties you intend to work with. Of course that’s just an example. You can set up searches to find and organize things as you see fit. Save the search when you’re done so you can open and use it whenever you have time to work with properties. To change properties for any single file, click its name. To assign the same property value to multiple files, select their icons. Then use the Details pane or properties sheet to make your changes. It will take some time if you have many files to work with. But having all the files together in one place, and the properties of interest in plain view, can make the job less daunting.

Setting Properties When You Save

Search indexes are nothing new. Database people have been using them for decades. Every time you do an Internet search, you’re actually searching an index of Web sites somewhere. Windows XP and other operating systems allow for some limited indexed searching through add-on programs. But Windows Vista is the first Windows version to have indexed searching—its own built-in search engine—built in from the ground up. People in the software business understand the value of that. As the years roll by, new versions of old programs will include the ability to tag files and set properties at the moment you first save the program. When you save a new file, be sure to look around for any options in the Save As dialog box that allow you to add tags or properties. When you’re faced with such options, think about words you might want to type into a Search box to find the file in the future. Ask yourself “If I need this thing six months from now and forget its file name, what word might I use to search for it?” or “How should I categorize this file in relation to other similar kinds of documents?” As your collection of files grows, and your searching skills grow, the few moments you spend thinking up keywords for tags and properties will pay off in spades.

Personalizing Searches

Getting the most from Vista’s searches includes knowing how to tweak its settings to work in ways that support the kinds of things you do. You can tweak some aspects of indexed searches through the Folder and Search Options dialog box. To get to the search options, do any of the following:

- If you’re in a folder, click the Organize button and click Folders and Search Options.

- If you’re in Search Results, click Search Tools and click Search Options.

- Tap the Windows keyor click the Start button, type fol, and then click Folder Options.

The first set of options under What to search dictates how searches are performed:

- In indexed locations, search filenames and contents. In non-indexed locations, search file names only: This is the default setting and gives the best performance for searching documents, messages, and such.

If some files aren’t showing up in your searches because they’re not in your user account folders, these options really won’t help. Better to extend the index to include those files.

- Always search file names and contents (might be slow): This option forces searches to look at the contents of non-indexed files, which can really slow things down. Better to index the nonindexed document files to get the speedier index searches.

- Always search file names only: Choosing this option excludes file contents from the searches, but won’t find files based on words inside those files. You’ll have to know the name of the file for which you’re searching. The How to search options affect different aspects of Vista searching. The Include subfolders when typing in the Search box only applies to the Search box in Explorer’s upper-right corner. If you choose this option, the Search box only filters out files from the current folder that don’t match the search criteria. It doesn’t dig down into subfolders to find other files that do match the search criteria. The Find partial matches option, when selected, lets you type a few characters into the Search box and still get a match. For example, let’s say you have numerous files with the name Sarah in the filename, Artist name, or whatever. When you type sar into the Search box, you see those items that contain Sarah. But if you clear the Find partial matches checkbox, it won’t work that way. You wouldn’t see items that contain Sarah until you typed all five characters, sarah. The Use natural language search is an interesting option related to typing search criteria directly into the Search box. I’ll talk about that under “Power Searches” later in this article. But here’s the gist of it: If you don’t choose that option, you have to type queries following strict syntax. For example, typing the following into the Search box on the Start menu displays all Windows Mail messages from Alan that contain the word “lunch”: from:alan about:lunch The following example would work, but only if Use natural language search is selected in the Search options: from alan about lunch The advantage is that the natural language option relaxes the rules, so that if you forget the colons the search still works. But sometimes that works against you because when you don’t follow stricter syntax rules you can’t always be sure exactly how Vista is interpreting the query. How you see the query, and how Vista sees it, might be two different ways. So the results from the search might not be what you were expecting. The Don’t use the Index when searching the file system (might be slow) option applies when you search non-indexed locations. When you select that option, searches outside the index work like non-indexed searches from older Windows versions. The search looks at every file in every folder and doesn’t even look at the search option. When you leave that option unselected, the search still uses the index for files in indexed locations. So that part of the search goes quickly. Then it falls back to the old non-indexed method, but only for files that aren’t indexed.

The last two options apply only when you’re searching non-indexed locations. Choose Include system directories if you want non-indexed searches to include Windows and other program files that are essential to proper functioning of your PC. These are not files you normally open or modify yourself. So it would only make sense to choose this option if you’re a programmer or administrator who needs frequent access to files in those locations. Otherwise you’re just slowing down your searches for no good reason. Choosing the Include compressed files (ZIP, CAB...) option extends the search into compressed Zip folders and the like. Typically people only use those for archived files that they don’t use often, because the compression and decompression add some time overhead to opening and closing the files. Including their contents in searches can also slow down searches. But if you want to include those files’ contents in your non-indexed searches, just select the checkbox. As always, clicking Restore Defaults sets all options back to their original defaults. Those are the options that provide the best performance for indexed searches, and cover the things most people would typically want included in their searches.

Managing the Search Index

To get the best performance and value from the search index, you want to make sure it includes all of the files you regularly use in your work. But you don’t want to go overboard and also include files you never, or rarely, use. If you do, you’re forcing it to search through thousands of filenames and properties for no good reason. By default, Vista maximizes the search index by including messages and documents from a limited number of folders. Of course there are many people who use multiple hard disks to store their files. If you want to include files from other drives and folders, you’ll need to add them to your search index. But do exercise some discretion. The larger the index, the more overhead involved in maintaining the index and the slower things go. Don’t add a folder to the index if it contains a bunch of non-document files or files you don’t open and use regularly.

Add a folder to your search index

There are a couple of ways to add folders to your search index. All require administrative privileges. You don’t need to log in to an administrative account though, so long as you know the password to an administrative account. One way to add folders to the search index is to simply search those folders and choose yes when given the opportunity to add those folders. Here are the steps:

1. Click the Start button and choose Search.

2. Click Advanced Search.

3. Click the button next to Location, then click Choose Search Locations.

4. Navigate to the drive that you want to add to the search index.

5. Expand the drive to show folders. Then select (check) the folder you want to add to the index. 6. Click OK.

7. Type something into the Search box (like * to find all files) to start searching.

8. Once the search gets started, you see a message stating that searches might be slow followed by “Click to add to index...”. Go ahead and click that bar and then click Add to Index.

9. A dialog box asks for confirmation. Click Add to Index, enter the password for an Administrator account, and click OK.