Specifications

25
Running Custom Searches
1
NOTE
The Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT must appear with all-uppercase letters in
your query.
Using Natural Language Queries
In the preceding section, I showed you how to use advanced query syntax to create
powerful search queries. The only problem is that it’s a chore having to memorize all
those operators and what they’re used for. If you’re not up for all that, Windows 7 offers
an alternative. It’s called natural language search, and it enables you to perform complex
searches without using any operators. Sweet!
First, follow these steps to turn on natural language search:
1. If you have a folder window open, select Organize, Folder and Search Options (or
Tools, Folder Options if you have the menu displayed; otherwise, click Start, type
folder, and then press Enter to select Folder Options in the search results). The
Folder Options dialog box appears.
2. Select the Search tab.
3. Activate the Use Natural Language Search check box.
4. Click OK to put the new setting into effect.
Crafting natural language queries is a bit of a black art because Microsoft has no documen-
tation available. Feel free to experiment to get the feel of these queries.
A basic natural language query looks like this:
adjective kind verb value
Here, adjective is an optional value that narrows down the search, usually by using a
value from a property (such as a genre for music or a file type for images);
kind is the type
of file, such as
music or images; verb is a verb that more or less corresponds to the property
you want to match, such as modified (the Date Modified property), (the Date Created prop-
erty),
from (the From property in an email), and by (the Artist property in a music file);
and
value is the specific value you want to match.
For example, if you want to return all the pop music done by the band Sloan, you’d enter
the following query:
pop music by sloan
NOT
(or –)
Choose. For example, the following code matches pictures where the Type prop-
erty is not JPEG:
type:NOT jpeg