Yesterday I posted an article entitled Windows 7 and the death of search, in which I said that the removal of contextualised searching, ie. searching by clause, in Windows Vista and Windows 7 was undermining Microsoft’s entire strategy of making finding and organising files easier with saved searches and libraries.

This morning Microsoft group manager Dan Plastina, posted a comment on that article which I have published again (below) in full.  I wanted to comment on specific points.

I’m the group manager for the ‘Find & Organize’ features in Windows 7. Our team is responsible for start menu search as well as the Explorer.

You are perceptive to have noticed that we have made search more approachable by most users. It was a key focus in Win7. For the masses, the biggest issue is one of users not discovering search features at all.

I argued yesterday that the lawyers have got a lot to answer for here, as do Google.  When they took Microsoft to court over integrated search in Windows Vista, many people thought that Microsoft backed down far too quickly and without a fight.  Traditionally people have looked to the Start Menu for search, and the lack of a dedicated search button there now will undoubtedly have an impact.  It’s a good question though if people DO actually use the Start Menu and Explorer search boxes in Vista.

In addition, the telemetry data we have indicates that keywords search is — by an extreme margin — the dominant type of search. Saved searches are not used that much (by the masses). This brings me to the point of your posting: “What has the Win7 team done for the advanced users?”

Saved searches are incredibly useful and are something I use all the time.  In my Vista Power Users guide I wrote at length about how useful they are and in my Windows 7 Power Users Guide there’s even more information and in-depth how-to’s.  They’re most useful however if you’re able to contextualise the searches.  For instance finding all PDF, Word and Excel files containing your home address for bills and letters, or finding all photos that you’ve given a 5 star rating to.

Libraries should work in the same way because they are essentially saved searches too.  Unfortunately these are crippled to just adding folders.  This means your files already have to be neatly sorted to be able to properly use the libraries feature in the first place.  This is a shame.

For the more sophisticated user we offer our ‘Advanced Query Syntax’ or AQS for short. Here is a link for more on how to extract all the power that it provides: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa965711.aspx. Go ahead and give a few a try. Once you see results you like, you can (still) save searches using the button we provide. The new search box builds on AQS by offering auto-complete behavior. The suggested filters teach you the AQS syntax as you select them. Some of the AQS filters are best added with the filters (try the date filters). As a tip for your readers, as you make the search box larger, we add more search filters. Libraries are nice, clean scopes of indexed storage that makes for fast ‘Arrange By’ views and AQS searches. If you have XP / Vista / Home Server PCs in your home, put Windows Desktop Search 4 on them and they can then be added to Libraries too!

I can go on for a long time more… If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me at the email I provided.

Cheers,
 Dan Plastina

I don’t doubt that contextualised search still exists within Windows 7, but when someone like myself regularly needs to consult the document Dan refers to, as a reminder of what the commands are, search is no longer instant or accessible.

What is really needed is a tool either within Windows 7, or as a separate download and part of Live Essentials suite that addresses this and gives users a powerful contextualised search program.  What’s more it needs to integrate easily with the Windows indexing engine, Saved Searches and Libraries.  I can’t see either Google or Copernic doing this, it’s going to have to rest with Microsoft.

I do understand and wholeheartedly welcome search in Windows 7 being more powerful than ever, searching the contents of files by default.  Unfortunately I feel that this alone isn’t enough to prevent Microsoft’s good work elsewhere being undermined.