Archive for the ‘search’ Tag
How to Search Evernote
Updated Dec 16 2009
I’ve been particularly dense about figuring this out, so, having stumbled upon it, I thought I’d share it with anyone who hasn’t gotten the most out of Evernote—particularly its tagging features. I’m surprised that Evernote doesn’t make more of this. It seems to be buried deep in their documentation, but to me, if I can remember all the parameters, it suddenly makes Evernote a much more powerful beast.
As Mark Stout points out, you can then save a complex search in Evernote and that becomes a filter of its own.
The easiest way to find something is just to type a keyword for it in the search box.
Indonesia
If you want to exclude a word from the results, prefix it with the minus sign:
-indonesia
If you’re looking for any of several words—in other words soeharto OR suharto—you can use the modifier any.
Note there has to be a space between the any: and the first search term. Any: must be after other parameters but before the search terms. All words after any: will be assumed to be part of the any: search:
any: soeharto suharto
Tags
You can also narrow down by tags (note there’s no space between colon and the tag word):
tag:indonesia
If you add tags together, you need to preface each with tag:
tag:interview tag:thailand
If a tag is more than one word, then you need to put it in quotes:
tag:"digital abundance"
If you want to exclude all notes with a certain tag you can:
-tag:china
You can also use wildcards with (or to exclude) tags (wildcards can only appear at the end of words, or alone):
tag:com*
Notebooks
You can specify which notebook or notebooks you want to search in (so you don’t have to click on a specific notebook before you search):
notebook:unifi
The notebook parameter must precede all other parameters.
If your notebook contains more than one word the words need to be within quotation marks: notebook:”media asia”
It doesn’t seem to be possible to use this modifier to search all notebooks (unless you add them all manually by name.)
Titles
You can limit your search to notes with a word in the title:
intitle:indonesia*
Date
You can limit your search by date. Use the terms:
- created – when the note was created
- updated – when the note was updated
on or after a specific date: created:20091113
on or after a specific time (in this case 9.15 am): created:20091113T091500
or today: created:day
or yesterday: created:-day
or the past 30 days: created:day-30
or this week: created:week
or this month: created:month
or this year: created:year
The minus sign makes all these before this date or period:
Or before a date: created:-20091113
or yesterday: created:day-1
etc
Resource
You can also find notes with or without images, audio or ink notes
notes with at least one image or gif: resource:image/gif
notes with no audio: -resource:audio/*
Sources
(but my mistakes)
How to Search in Windows Seven
(This was written in frustration at the lack of useful guide to making searches in Windows Seven. Some of the text is drawn from this Dummies page. Update: Also I’ve taken some stuff from this excellent article at Windows 7 News.)
These search parameters help you narrow down what you’re looking for in Windows Seven’s Explorer (to jump to the search box in that program hit F3. From anywhere in Windows Seven hit Windows key (
) + F) to open a new search window.
How to use filters
These filters can be used in conjunction with, or separate from, text search terms. If you just start typing a term, Windows will start looking for all files (and folders) that include that name in the file name, the folder name, the contents of the file and its metadata (tags and whatnot). Although the idea of searching as you type is a good one, it can be frustrating if you need to correct something you’ve written.
Date
Type date: (or one of the options below) and, while it may take a little while, a drop down menu should appear that will allow you to specify the date of the file you’re looking for.
Date Modified: Search for files based on the date they were last modified.
Date Created: Searches according to when the file was created. You can select the date (or a range of dates) from a mini-calendar that appears.
You can also be less specific and choose: A Long Time Ago, Earlier This Year, Earlier This Month, Last Week, Earlier This Week, or Yesterday.
(See also Date taken below.)
Boolean terms’
You can also filter use some boolean terms like AND, OR and NOT, as well as wildcards:
suharto AND indonesia
suharto NOT indonesia
*harto NOT soeharto (any word ending with ‘harto’ except ‘soeharto’)
“pak harto”
Size
Search for a specific file size by typing its KBs or MBs in the search text box. Or, you can search by various size ranges via the drop-down menu:
Kind
Search for files of a specific type as selected from the drop-down list that appears when you click the Kind option. What’s frustrating with this is that there’s only kind of Document file (i.e., you can’t use this filter to narrow it down to spreadsheets, say, or word documents. For that you need to use Type below.)
Type
Searches based on certain file types by extension, such as .pdf, .jpg, or .docx. (Waiting for the computing filter to run on this one takes a while. I wouldn’t bother.)
I don’t know whether this is true or not, but the syntax needs to include an = after the colon, like this:
type:=.doc
Leaving it out seems to include files of other types in the list:
Name
Searches by filname. You can enter all or part of the filename in the search text box after the Name filter.
When you don’t know all of a filename, you can use the asterisk (*) to stand for one or more wildcard characters in the filename and a question mark (?) to stand for individual wildcard characters.
Tag
This filter lets you search for a file by the tags assigned to it. Enter one or more tags after the Tags filter in the Search text box. If you’re not sure of the tags just wait for the drop down box to appear (it should say something like computing filters… prior to that)
Author
Search for file by a particular author. Enter an author name after the Authors filter in the Search text box or select the name from the drop-down list that appears. (This filter is called Artists when searching audio files. See below for looking for specific songs)
Filters specifically for multimedia files
Pictures
Date taken: Searches for photos by the date they were snapped.
If you have added whatever folders you’re using for your photo (or video) files to the Pictures (or Video) Library, then it’s probably easier to look for a photo (or video) by first clicking on Library, and then clicking on the search box, now called Search Pictures (or Search Video).
You’ll notice that the drop down menu now includes search filters relevant to photos (or video):
Music
Length: is another parameter you can use to search for an audio or video file by its relative length. You can enter the exact length or select one of the Length options that appear in the drop-down list.
If you have added whatever folder you’re using for your music files to the Music Library, then it’s probably easier to look for a song or artist by first clicking on Library, and then clicking on the search box (now called Search Music). You’ll notice that the drop down menu now includes search filters relevant to music:
How to Search Specific Sites With Speed Launch
Filed under: medium | Tags: keyboard, microsoft, search, shortcut
Leave a Comment 
Microsoft’s Speed Launch is a basic, but useful, launcher program which allows you to quickly access files, folders, websites etc from a small popup text box. Think Launchy or ActiveWords but with the more novice user in mind. These kinds of tools are especially useful for those people who don’t like leaving the keyboard when they’re working, but like drag and drop over fiddly macros and strings to get things automated.
And it does actually offer some features that even advanced users might find useful: in particular, the ability to be able to search specific websites, search engines or even your webmail straight from the popup toolbar. But it’s not as easy to set up as you might hope, and the explanational video has way too much music and not enough explanation to tide you through.
Here, therefore, is how to add a website relatively easily in ten simple moves:
Install Speed Launch if you haven’t done so already.
Open a browser and the search engine/website/webmail program you want to search.
Enter a search term. (It doesn’t matter what it is at this point.)
Drag the URL of the results page onto the Speed Launch target icon:
A window like this should appear:
Give the search a name, followed by a period:
Click on the Add button.
Another dialog box will pop up, asking you “what type of information will people supply for use with this function”:
Enter the type of information you’re accessing (in this case news search term):
Then find the text of the search you just made in the lower URL (in this case pakistan), and highlight it:
Click Finish. The dialog box should disappear.
Now time to test your new shortcut.
Hit the Windows key and C (Win + c) to bring up the Speed Launch dialog.
Type in the name of your new search. Speed Launch will auto suggest, and you don’t need the period. A dialog will pop up:
Enter the term and hit Launch:
Tips:
You can’t edit an existing short cut but you can add to it. So, for example, if you wanted to search multiple sites with one search, just follow the same instructions, but when you’re prompted whether you want to merge or replace a shortcut, choose merge.
I’m not sure this is the quickest way of doing this kind of thing, but I certainly think it’s got potential. I like the drop and drag nature of it; it’s great for adding files and folders, as well as websites, on the fly. The interface could definitely be improved, but the authors make clear they’re not experts in their field, and just feel they’ve come up with something useful that others might like. Would more Microsoft software be developed like this.
