There’s a lot more to Windows 8 Search than you think. Here’s how to get
the most out of it.
The basic Windows 8 search is straightforward: press Windows key+Q, highlight what
you want to search (Apps, Settings, Files, and so on) and Windows 8 does your bidding.
Simple, but not particularly powerful.
There’s a lot more to Search than meets the eye, though. You can use it to search for
financial information, sports, information, maps, and even through your email—
without having to go through the relevant app. So if you’re in the middle of using Word
or Internet Explorer, say, and you want to search through your email or through maps,
you can do it.
As always when doing a search, press Windows key+Q. Then highlight the app through
which you want to search, for example, Maps or Mail. When you do that, the app itself
launches on the left side of the screen, and your search box stays on the right side
(Figure 1). Now type your search term.
Figure 1.
Searching through Maps
What happens next varies according to the app you’re searching. When you do a
search this way, you’ll see results delivered however the app normally delivers results.
So the results for Mail, for example, differ from the results for Maps.
Note: You can only search this way through Windows 8-style apps (formerly called
Metro apps). To search through Desktop apps, you’ll have to search the oldfashioned
way, from inside the app itself.
You also need to understand the various types of search parameters you can use for
the various Windows 8 apps. Most are self-explanatory—type in your search term,
what else? But for others, some guidance is in order. Here’s what you need to know.
Type a search term, and you search through subject, sender, email address, and body.
If you’d like, though, you can launch a specialized search, for example, searching for
specific senders, for specific subject lines, and so on. So to search for all the email
messages that have the word “tennis” in the subject line, you’d type this:
Subject: Tennis
You can also search using From: and To: And you can search by date, like this:
Date: 7/20/2012
Note: If you live outside the U.S. and use localization in Windows 8, this technique
may not work, because some countries use different date and number notations
than the U.S. Test your own country’s date and number notations to see if they
work.
Finance
You can do normal searches here, and also search using a company’s stock ticker
symbol, such as MSFT for Microsoft and AAPL for Apple.
Maps
This search uses Bing Maps. Obviously, you can search for locations here. But you can
do more than that—you can also find stores, services, and other information as well.
So if you want to find restaurants in Cambridge, MA, simply type that into the search
box, and that’s what you’ll find (Figure 2).
Figure 2.
Finding restaurants using the Maps search
There’s plenty of other information you can find this way. Try searching for a certain
type of store, a park in an area, and so on.
Music
Search by artist, album, and song. You can search your own music collection as well
as the new Microsoft Marketplace.
More Search Hacks
Windows 8 also gives you some control over overall search behavior, including which
apps show up in search and whether Windows saves your searches so you can run
them again (Figure 3).
To control this and more, press Windows key+I to get to Settings, then select
Change PC Settings→Search. (On a touch screen, slide in from the right side of the screen and
select Settings, then select Change PC Settings→Search.)
The bottom part of the screen shows you all the apps you can search in. Turn off any you don’t want to show
up in Search, and turn on any that you want to show up but aren’t showing up. (Keep
in mind this setting controls only Windows 8-native apps, not Desktop apps.)
If you’d like Windows to show the apps you search most commonly at the top of the
screen when you do a search, turn on “Show the apps I search most often at the top.”
If you turn that off, they’ll display in alphabetical order. This screen also lets you delete
your search history, and you can tell Windows whether it should save your searches,
so when you type the first few letters, your previous searches pop up so you can select
them. That way, you’ll save keystrokes. On the other hand, it also lets other people
who use the device know what you’re searching for, so if that concerns you, turn off
the setting.
Figure 3.
Controlling the way Windows 8 searches
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