Indexing Service

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Overview

Windows Indexing Service is an operating system level service and a standard feature of Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. It maintains an index of most of the files on a computer and updates them without user intervention.

Search Interfaces

There are 3 ways to search for files using Windows Indexing Service.

3rd party applications

3rd party applications such as AimAtFile, Grokker Desktop or Eluent tools

Windows Search

1. Turn on Indexing Service, it may take hours to index large drives.

2. Open the Windows file search box by clicking Start, Search

3. Type only in the space labelled 'A word or phrase in the file' (or in Windows 2000, 'Containing Text').

4. To find a word inside a file, preface it with '!'. And, to find a filename, preface it with '@filename'.

Example: Typing '!holiday' and hitting 'enter' will instantly find files containing the word 'holiday'. And '@filename holiday' will instantly display all filenames containing the complete word holiday. Adding a wildcard '*' to the end to find other words like 'holidaying'.

Indexing Service Query Form

With Windows XP Start > Administrative Tools > Computer Management Services and Applictains > Indexing Service > System > Query the Catalog Type text and click OK