Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Using Natural Language Queries

In the preceding section, I showed you how to use advanced query syntax to create powerful search queries. The only problem is that it's a chore having to memorize all those operators and what they're used for. If you're not up for all that, Windows 7 offers an alternative. It's called natural language search, and it enables you to perform complex searches without using any operators.

First, follow these steps to turn on natural language search:

1. If you have a folder window open, select Organize, Folder and Search Options (or Tools, Folder Options if you have the menu displayed; otherwise, click Start, type folder, and then press Enter to select Folder Options in the search results). The Folder Options dialog box appears.
2. Select the Search tab.
3. Activate the Use Natural Language Search check box.
4. Click OK to put the new setting into effect.

Crafting natural language queries is a bit of a black art because Microsoft has no documentation available. Feel free to experiment to get the feel of these queries.

A basic natural language query looks like this:

adjective kind verb value

Here, adjective is an optional value that narrows down the search, usually by using a value from a property (such as a genre for music or a file type for images); kind is the type of file, such as music or images; verb is a verb that more or less corresponds to the property you want to match, such as modified (the Date Modified property), (the Date Created property), from (the From property in an email), and by (the Artist property in a music file); and value is the specific value you want to match.

For example, if you want to return all the pop music done by the band Sloan, you'd enter the following query:

pop music by sloan

Similarly, if you want all the JPEG images that were created today, you'd use the following query:

jpeg images created today

You can keep adding more properties and values to target your searches. For example, if we want our Sloan search to return only those songs rated with five stars, we'd modify the search as follows:

pop music by sloan rating *****

You can still perform Boolean searches in natural language queries. For example, if you want documents where the Author property includes Paul or Karen, you'd use the following query:

documents by paul or karen

Similarly, if you want to return all your videos except those in the QuickTime format, you'd use the following:

videos not quicktime

NOTE Unlike with AQS, the Boolean operators or and not can appear in lowercase letters. (The Boolean operator and is implied in all multiterm natural language queries, so you never have to use it.)

Finally, note that when you're working with dates, there are several keywords you can use in your natural language queries, including the following: yesterday, today, tomorrow, week, month, year, last, this, and next. For example, if you want to see all the TIFF images created this week, you'd use the following:

jpeg images created this week