If you’ve upgraded to Windows 7, chances are you’ve discovered a few neat enhancements along the way. Have you discovered its “search filters” yet? If not, head on over to Windows Explorer by right-clicking on the Start button and choosing open Windows Explorer. Once launched, look in the upper right corner where you’ll find the Search bar.

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
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