Page 188 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Classic. Out of the box, Windows doesn’t actually scrounge

through every file on your computer. It indexes only your stuff, on
your computer. That’s everything in your personal folder: email,
pictures, music, videos, program names, entries in your People and
Calendar apps, Office documents, and so on. It searches your

OneDrive, too (Figure 3-15).

You’re welcome to add individual additional folders to this list, as
described below.

Classic indexing does not index any other folders—the ones that
contain Windows’ own operating-system files and all your
programs, for example—and ignores any external disks attached to

your PC.

Note

Windows indexes all the drives connected to your PC, but not other hard drives on the network.
You can, if you wish, add other folders to the list of indexed locations manually (read on).

Enhanced. If you turn this option on, Windows indexes everything
on, or connected to, your PC: every folder and disk, every folder
and subfolder. (Except, of course, the personal folders of other

people with accounts on your machine; if you were hoping to
search your spouse’s email for phrases like “Meet you at

midnight,” forget it.)

The additional indexing takes time (roughly 15 minutes), power
(keep your laptop plugged in), and disk space (your index file is
bigger). But being able to search so widely so quickly has been a

dream of Windows fans for years.

Adding New Places to the Index

No matter which search mode you’ve chosen, you can tweak the factory

settings. Suppose you use classic mode, but there’s some folder on another