If there is a particular file that you’d
like to find, but you don’t know where it is, browsing through the
network isn’t a particularly easy way to find it. However, you can
quickly locate shared folders and files by name and by content using
the Search box at the upper-right corner of any Windows Explorer window.
To
begin a search, open any Windows Explorer window, for example, by
clicking Start, Computer, or Start, Documents. Then follow the
instructions under the next several headings, to find files, computers,
or printers.
Searching for Files or Folders
You can search a particular network computer for files and folders by name and by content, using these steps:
1. | Open an Explorer window and select Network in the left pane.
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2. | Expand the Network list, and click the name of a computer.
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3. | Type all or part of the desired filename, or a word or phrase to be found in the file, in the Search box.
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This
will locate files and folders within the contents of all shared folders
on that computer, but only those that you have permission to view.
To
perform the same search across several computers, start with one
computer, as just described. Then, when the Search Again In ribbon
appears across the bottom of the search results listing, click Custom,
as illustrated in Figure 1.
Expand the Network list and check the names of all the computers that
you’d like to include in the search (including the one you started
with). Click OK to restart the search across all of the selected
computers.
To search all the shared libraries in a homegroup, the steps are similar:
1. | Open an Explorer window and select Homegroup in the left pane.
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2. | Type all or part of the desired filename, or a word or phrase to be found in the file, in the Search box.
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This will search all of the libraries shared by other
users in the homegroup, but it won’t search your own libraries (and it
can’t search the libraries in any computer that isn’t turned on and
connected to the network). To add your own libraries to the search,
when the Search Again In ribbon appears at the bottom of the search
results listing, click Custom. Check Libraries and Homegroup, then click OK.
You
can use the Custom option to chose any number of specific locations
that you’d like to search. In the Homegroup and Network categories, you
can open the lists under these titles and select just particular users
and specific categories of files.
On an Active Directory network, the domain administrator can choose to list, or publish,
some shared folders in the directory; they might contain important
resources that the company wants to make widely accessible and easy to
find.
Searching for Computers
To
search for a computer by name, select the word Network in the Explorer
window’s left pane and type all or part of a computer name in the
Search box. Windows will display an icon for each matching computer.
You
can explore any of the listed computers to view its shared folders or
printers; if you delve into the shared folders, you can open or copy
the available files as you find them.
Searching for Printers
Searching
for printers is possible only on an Active Directory network. In a
large corporate network, hundreds or thousands of network printers
might be scattered over a large area. Find Printers lets an AD network
user find just the right type of printer using a powerful query form.
This feature is handy if you’re a business traveler using the network
in an unfamiliar office, or if you’re in such a large office setting
that you aren’t familiar with all the printing resources on your
network.
Tip
View
the entire directory the first time you use Find Printers. This will
give you an idea of how location and printer names are organized in
your company. If too many names are listed, you can click Clear All to
clear the search listing and then restrict your search using a location
name that makes sense for your network. For example, if your company
has put floor and room numbers such as “10-123” in the Location column,
you could restrict your search to printers on the 10th floor by
searching for “10-” in Location. |
To
search AD for a printer, open any Windows Explorer view and select
Network in the left pane. Click Search Active Directory and select
Printers in the Find drop-down list. You can leave the scope set to
Entire Directory, or you can select a subdomain next to the word In.
You
can search for printers in three ways: by name and location, by printer
capabilities, or by more advanced attributes. To find all the printers
in the directory, leave the form blank, as shown in Figure 2, and click Find Now.
Searching Active Directory
Active
Directory contains information on many more objects than just users,
computers, and printers. It includes shared folders, organizational
units, policy settings, certificate templates, containers (business
groupings), foreign security principals, remote storage services, RPC
services (used for advanced client/server software applications), and
trusted domains. It can also contain information for other objects
defined by your own organization. Most of this information is used only
by domain administrators to configure Windows networks over vast
distances; however, you can search for anything and can specify your
qualifications based on more than 100 different criteria.
To
make an AD search, select Network in the left pane of a Windows
Explorer view and select Search Active Directory. The AD search tool
appears, as shown in Figure 3.
To start, select one of several search categories in the Find drop-down
list. You can use a quick form-based search for any of the most useful
objects, similar to the forms you may have seen if you have ever
searched for users.
You can also use the Advanced tab to build specific queries such as “Last Name Starts with xxx,” as shown in Figure 3.
This is the full-blown search system, and here you have 53 fields to
choose from when searching for users, everything from Assistant to ZIP
Code: A to Z, if you need it.
Note
Strangely,
in Custom Search, any qualifiers set in the form-based search are
applied along with a manually entered LDAP query; you should be sure to
clear the form if you are going to enter an LDAP query directly. |
If
you choose Find: Custom Search, you have the whole gamut of fields in
the entire catalog of ADobjects to choose from, and in the Advanced
tab, you can enter Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) queries
directly for submission to the AD service. This is the native query
syntax for Active Directory, and it’s available here mostly for system
debugging.
