"Actually, I was just working on that excel file yesterday let me see if I can find it" Said a client to me recently, 5 minutes later we were still shuffling through the my documents folder looking high and low for a single excel document, was it really taking this long? Was it really possible that Google could search the entire internet in fractions of a second but we were stuck looking for one file in the my documents folder of a single computer for what seemed like hours (but was probably only minutes)?
If you're like most computer users who keep lots of information on their PC you've probably run into this time and time again, well it's unreasonable! How does Google do it so much faster? It's called indexing, much like a library filing system Google (or Yahoo or MSN search if you prefer) indexes all the files it comes across for later retrieval, it's a shame our brains don't work quite that well right?
Well now there's no reason your PC shouldn't. A free tool from Microsoft released this year allows you to create an index of the entire contents of your computer (or small office network) for instant searching! Whether your searching for Word, Excel, PDF, Pictures, Video's, Music, Outlook Emails, Contacts, Calendar items or any number of hundreds of other formats if it's on your computer, the Windows Desktop Search Toolbar will index it for you and put it literally at your fingertips and best of all, it's absolutely FREE and SECURE!
Windows Desktop Search helps increase your productivity by:
- Helping users quickly find and retrieve e-mail messages, documents, and many other file types located on their PC and company network.
- Providing a familiar, integrated, and convenient search experience for Windows users.
- Working with other Microsoft search technologies such as Live Search and Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007.
Searches are performed not only on file names, but also on the contents of the file as well as the keywords and comments the file is tagged with.
For example, searching the computer for The Beatles would return a list of the Beatles music on your computer, as well as any e-mails and documents that include the phrase "The Beatles" in their titles or contents.
Windows Desktop Search, by default, includes handlers for most common filetypes. WDS also features word-wheeled search (or search-as-you-type). It begins searching as soon as characters are entered in the search box, and keeps on refining and filtering the search results as more characters are typed in. As an advantage, this results in finding the requires files even before the full search text is entered.
I personally use it whenever I want to check the last communication I had with a particular client or contact, a quick search of their name on my office network (including 3 pc's) shows me all the emails I've ever sent / received from that client, all the voice mails I've received to my in box (my email forwards to my mailbox), all the word, excel, PDF or power point presentations I've ever included that client in as well as the contact card I have for that client in Outlook now if only I could get it to record and transcribe my telephone calls! Maybe the next version :)
Microsoft offers this tool for your download convenience online here I hope you find it as useful as I do! (Choose the option WDS 3.01 for Windows XP SP2)
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