Normally, Window’s default indexing settings work well for most computers, so you may need to do no more than change the list of folders that Windows indexes, as described in the previous section. However, Windows also provides advanced settings with which you may want to experiment. To do so, follow these steps:

1. In the Indexing Options dialog box, click the Advanced button, and then authenticate yourself to User Account Control. Windows displays the Advanced Options dialog box, which has two pages of settings: the Index Settings page and the File Types page.

2.In the File Settings group box on the Index Settings page, ignore the Index Encrypted Files check box, which applies only to versions of Windows Vista that include encryption which Windows Vista Home doesn’t. Select the Treat Similar Words with Diacritics as Different Words check box if you want Windows to use diacritics to distinguish words instead of ignoring them and treating, say, Motörhead the same as Motorhead.

3. In the Troubleshooting group box, you can click the Rebuild button to rebuild your index if you suspect that it has become corrupted - for example, because Search now doesn’t find files in folders that Windows is set to index. You can click the Restore Defaults button to restore your index to its default settings if you’ve made changes that appear to have had a negative effect.

4. The Index Location group box shows you the current location of the index file. You can move the file to a different location by clicking the Select New button, choosing the drive and folder in the Browse for Folder dialog box, and then clicking the OK button. The only reason for moving the index is if your computer has two or more hard disks and you can move the index to a faster disk than it is currently on. Having the index on a faster disk will give you somewhat faster indexing and searching.

5. The File Types page of the Advanced Options dialog box lets you choose which file types Windows indexes and whether it indexes only the properties or the properties and the file contents. Follow these steps:

• In the list box, select the file extension associated with the file type you want to affect. For example, select the DOCX file extension to affect Word 2007 documents.

• Select the check box to make Windows index the file type. Windows automatically selects the check boxes for file types that you can create.

• In the How Should This File Be Indexed? group box, select the Index Properties and File Contents option button if you want Windows to index the document’s content as well as its properties. Otherwise, select the Index Properties Only option button.

• If you need to add a file extension to the list, click in the text box near the bottom of the File Types page, type the extension, and then click the Add New Extension button. Windows adds it to the list and selects its check box and the Index Properties Only option button. You can then select the Index Properties and File Contents option button if appropriate.

6. When you’ve finished choosing advanced options, click the OK button. Windows closes the Advanced Options dialog box and returns you to the Indexing Options dialog box.

7. Click the Close button. Windows closes the Indexing Options dialog box.

Why Not Index All File Contents?

There are three reasons not to index all file contents:

1. Indexing file contents as well as file properties takes Windows much longer to complete the indexing process.

2. Your index file quickly becomes larger than it needs to be.

3. Searching tends to become less efficient, as you get more unrelated hits.

For these reasons, it’s best to index file contents only for data files that you might need to be able to identify by their contents. For example, you might need to be able to pick out a Word document by a particular phrase it contains.