At first glance, the Search bar looks similar to the old one. However, once you enter your search term, a small menu unrolls with a prompt to “add a search filter” and a series of words highlighted in blue such as: Kind, Date Modified, Type, and Size. Clicking on any of these words adds the command followed by a colon (for example “Kind:”) to the search bar and opens a fresh display with additional choices. Note that the words vary depending on the location that you are searching and the available properties. You may also see choices such as: Author, Name, Length, Date Created, Date Taken, and Tags.

If you choose the search filter Kind, your choices will be:

* Calendar – Restricts results to Calendar entries
* Communication – Restricts results to communication-related entries
* Contact – Restricts results to Contacts
* Document – Restricts results to documents and spreadsheets
* E-mail – Restricts results to e-mail messages
* Feed – Restricts results to RSS feeds
* Folder – Restricts results to folders
* Game – Restricts results to games
* Instant Message – Restricts results to Instant Messages

Each search filter type has its own menu of choices For example, if you choose Date Modified, you have several choices such as picking a date or date range from a calendar or selecting from these choices: A long time ago, Earlier this year, Earlier this month, Earlier this week, Last week, and Yesterday.

Specific search filters appear when you’re searching specific folders. For example, if you click on Videos and enter a term into the Search box, you’ll be presented with search filters such as Length, Date Created, and Type. If you know that the video you are looking for is short, you can restrict the results to “Short (1 to 5 minutes).” On the other hand, if you know that the video is long, try a longer filter such as “Long (30 to 60 minutes)” or “Very Long (over 60 minutes). Restricting results based on known criteria such as video length makes it easier to find relevant results.

While search filters are new to Windows7, the concept isn’t new. Microsoft Word has allowed users to search based on Properties for a while now. Search filters allow you to search for files based on a file’s properties from within Windows Explorer. For example, if you have saved comments inside a Word document’s Properties, you can use the following syntax to search for that document based on its comments: Kind:=document comment: Windows will then narrow your search results to Word documents containing comments in the stored in the file’s Properties.

The new search filters are useful in helping you find files based on different criteria. Take some time now to get familiar with these different options so that the next time you need to find a file, you know how to find it quickly with search filters.