Date modified, Name, Size, Folder Path, and Rating; for Music, you get Album, Artists, Genre, Length, Folder Path, Year, Rating, and Title; and so on. Tip: If you make the Search box bigger—by dragging the divider bar (between the address bar and the Search box) to the left—then Windows has enough room to show you more search filters. Usually, there are eight in all.
Figure 3-3: Left: As soon as you begin typing into an Explorer window’s Search box, you get clickable Search filters like Date taken, Tags, and Type. Right: Clicking one opens this pop-up menu that controls how to restrict your search.
As soon as you set up a filter like this, two alarming things happen: •• The Search box fills up with codes. You’ll see, for example, datemodified:last week, or size:medium in blue text. These are, in fact, exactly the same codes described on page 125. In other words, these clickable search filters are nothing more than user-friendlified, quicker ways of entering the same search codes. If you’re more of a keyboard person than a mouse person, it’s perfectly OK to type those codes into the Search box manually; the result is exactly the same. You can use as many of these filters as you want. The more you click them (or type the corresponding shorthand), the longer the codes are in the Search box. If you want to find medium files created by Casey last year with the tag Murgatroid project, go right ahead. Tip: You can adjust the second part of each code just by clicking it. For example, if you chose size:small and you really wanted size:medium—or if the size:small query didn’t produce any results—click the word small. The pop-up menu of sizes appears again so you can adjust your selection.
•• The results window changes. Search filters work by hiding all the icons that don’t match. So don’t be alarmed if you click Size and then Small—and most of the files in your window suddenly disappear. Windows is doing what it thinks you wanted—showing you only the small files—in real time, as you adjust the filters. At any time, you can bring all the files back into view by clicking the little X at the right end of the Search box.