How Does Document Search Work?
It might be an abstract concept for someone who is not too familiar with computer terminology to understand the difference between a database and a file and how to search appropriately. Here is what you need to know about the technical details of text search implementation.
A full-text query performs a semantic search of character data in tables if it has full-text search enabled. A semantic or linguistic search compares words and phrases with each other instead of searching character patterns. For those who know something about checking for plagiarism, this might make more sense, but the full-text search capability compares queries and reports how many similarities there are to the original search term.
Implementing a full-text search in a database involves identifying the tables and columns that need to be indexed for full-text search, and ensuring that consequent changes to the data in registered columns are updated to keep the full-text index synched with the data.
Standard relational databases are modified as data is updated; the same is not true for full-text indexes. When rows are added or deleted, full-text indexes are repopulated asynchronously because it takes more time to update a full-text index than a standard index. Full-text searches are not as precise as standard searches, as the result set is simply rows containing the word or phrase being compared, regardless of where they appear in the character stream.
How to Configure the Windows Search Tool to Be More Effective
Perform Your Search from the Start Menu: If you use the search bar in Windows Explorer and start typing in the search bar, it searches the entire computer for files, folders, and programs matching those terms.
Search the Contents of Your Files: Windows searches the contents of the files, meaning if the search term shows up inside a document, but not in the name, the file will show in the search results. However, this does not always work. An easy method of improving content search is to open up Windows Explorer > Organize > Folder and Search Options, then go to the Search tab. Select the “Always search file names and contents” radio button.
Choose Which File Extensions Can Be Searched By Content: Windows Explorer indexes all libraries by default, so users must either create a new index or right-click on an applicable library and go to Properties to add the particular folder to the index.
There Is an Alternative: Go to Indexing Options (try searching it in the Start Menu) and then click the Modify button to add a new folder to the index. This is useful if you want to index a folder but don’t want it to appear in any of your Windows 7 libraries.
Users can also manually type in search filters.
Where Did Clippy Go?
Here is why we miss Microsoft’s helpful, paperclip-shaped office assistant:
Some time ago, Microsoft created a talking paperclip with funny eyes called Clippy. He was supposed to help you navigate Microsoft Office and was around in Office versions 97 to 2003 before he was benched due to the public getting too annoyed with him. Clippy was annoying to most and was regularly fidgeting around on the screen, but he was optimized for a first-time user, and we would like to see a more high-level Clippy with better AI algorithms to assist with more advanced tasks because everybody needs a little help from a friendly little paperclip at times.