It seems that in final version of Windows Vista, Microsoft have replaced the term Virtual Folder with the term 'Searches'. What ever the terminology, Virtual folders really impressed me. The concept is that you can create
collections of files which match any criteria that you can devise. Another way of looking at a virtual folder is as a permanently display of the search results. Vista re-uses the query that produced the search to
generate the
contents of the 'Searches' container.
Begin your quest for virtual folders by opening Explorer and looking for a 'Searches' folder that Vista creates automatically. What you are looking for are blue virtual folders in amongst the normal yellow
or green folders.
In my example, notice that 'Recent Documents' and 'Shared By Me' have blue folders, whereas the 'Links' folder is green.
One rich source
of blue Searches folders is under your username, for example, if you navigate in Explorer to the
Administrator folder, now you should see a green folder called 'Searches', inside are a variety of blue translucent virtual folders.
You should see old friends from XP, for
example, Documents, Music and Pictures. The difference is that they are now not plain yellow folders but display the distinctive blue of a Vista virtual folder.
The Virtual Folder concept relies on creating a search, but rather than abandoning the query once you have found what you were looking for, save the contents of the search in a special blue
folder. From a planning point of view, you could either set out with a list of useful criteria and then create matching folders, or, whenever you search think, would these results make a good virtual folder?
Guy Recommends a Free Tool: VM Console
Virtual Machines are great for reducing hardware costs, but they can
multiply fast and can get out of control. Solarwinds' VM Console is
the classic tool to answer the following questions:
Which VM's are struggling and thus need more resources.
Which VM's are idle, and so are literally a waste of (disk) space.
The benefit of a good utility such as Solarwinds Virtualization Manager
is that you see the big picture yet drill down into the detail of disk,
memory or CPU.
Experiment to create a Search Folder called Stuff.
My mission is to create a blue Searches folder for any document containing the word 'Stuff'. However, there is no 'New Virtual Folder' option as there is with ordinary folders, instead you have to rely on a completely different
technique using a Save Search. I would like to emphasise that you must start from the Search box to the right of the normal Windows Explorer dialog box.
I prepared for this experiment by creating a 4 documents containing the words 'Stuff'.
You can find Vista's Search in its traditional place, on the Start Menu.
Microsoft have made Vista's Search clearer
and easier to enter queries than the XP version.
Once the interface opens, type your query in the Search for: dialog box.
The key step is once Search returns the results, click on 'Save Search' from the drop down menu. All that remains is to choose a suitable File name for
your Search Folder.
Incidentally, this is a different technique from early beta versions of Vista. Once again a warning that Vista's beta features can be modified in the final release.
As ever, Microsoft provide properties for almost every object, and blue Searches folders are no exception. My suggestion is that
you go back into the properties to review and refine the initial query, particularly if you see too many or too few files in your Searches folder.
You could adjust the file types, or add a filter. If you add a filter, it reminds you of how to improve
queries with the two famous conjunctions: 'or' 'and'.
As with many of the new lists, Vista uses XML to format the display of files inside each virtual folder.
In Vista, indexing is an order of magnitude faster than it was in XP. As with so many of Vista's settings, start at the Control Panel. Next select System and Maintenance --> Indexing Options.
Here you can adjust the file types to index and whether or not to index the contents.
See more on Windows 8 Indexing
options
Guy Recommends: A Free Trial of the Network Performance Monitor
(NPM)
Solarwinds'
Orion performance monitor
will help you discover what's happening on your network. This
utility will also guide you through troubleshooting; the dashboard will
indicate whether the root cause is a broken link, faulty equipment or
resource overload.
Perhaps the NPM's best feature is the way it suggests solutions to network
problems. Its
second best feature is the ability to monitor the health of individual VMWare
virtual machines. If you are interested in troubleshooting, and creating
network maps, then I recommend that you take advantage of Solarwinds' offer.
Creating the virtual folders in Windows Vista is a knack that you will soon learn, just remember to start with Search. Virtual folders are rightly one of the best new features of
Vista, so keep your eye out for applications of these special queries.
If you like this page then please share it with your friends
