Specifications

Running Custom Searches

To fix this kind of thing, you can create powerful and targeted searches by using a special

syntax—called Advanced Query Syntax (AQS)—in your search queries.

For file properties, you use the following syntax:

property:value

Here, property is the name of the file property you want to search on, and value is the

criteria you want to use. The property can be any of the metadata categories used by

Windows. For example, the categories in a music folder include Name, Track, Title, Artists,

Album, and Rating. Right-click any column header in Details view to see more properties

such as Genre and Length, and you can click More to see the complete list.

Here are a few things to bear in mind:

. If the property name is a single word, use that word in your query. For example, the

following code matches music where the Artists property is Coldplay:

artists:coldplay

. If the property name uses two or more words, remove the spaces between the words

and use the resulting text in your query. For example, the following code matches

pictures where the Date Taken property is August 23, 2009:

datetaken:8/23/2009

. If the value uses two or more words and you want to match the exact phrase,

surround the phrase with quotation marks. For example, the following code matches

music where the Genre property is Alternative & Punk:

genre:”alternative & punk”

. If the value uses two or more words and you want to match both words in any

order, surround them with parentheses. For example, the following code matches

music where the Album property contains the words Head and Goats in any order:

album:(head goats)

. If you want to match files where a particular property has no value, use empty

braces, [], as the value. For example, the following code matches files where the Tags

property is empty:

tags:[]

You can also refine your searches with the following operators and wildcards:

> Matches files where the specified property is greater than the specified value. For

example, the following code matches pictures where the Date Taken property is

later than January 1, 2009:

datetaken:>1/1/2009