Page 186 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

You might think that typing something into the search box triggers a search.

But to be technically correct, Windows has already done its searching. In
the first hours after you install Windows—or after you attach a new hard
drive—it invisibly collects information about all your files. Like a student
cramming for an exam, it reads, takes notes on, and memorizes the contents

of your hard drives.

And not just the names of your files. That would be so 2004!

No, Windows actually looks inside the files. It can read and search the

contents of text files, email, Windows People, Windows Calendar, RTF and
PDF documents, and documents from Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and
PowerPoint).

In fact, Windows searches over 300 bits of text associated with your files—
a staggering collection of tidbits, including the names of the layers in a
Photoshop document, the tempo of an MP3 file, the shutter speed of a

digital-camera photo, a movie’s copyright holder, a document’s page size,
and on and on. (Technically, this sort of secondary information is called
metadata. It’s usually invisible, although a lot of it shows up in the Details

pane described on “Tags, Metadata, and Properties”.)