Deep File Divers

MSN Search Toolbar

MSN Search Toolbar With Windows Desktop Search, our Best Bet winner, can find hundreds of common file types; but you must download and install filters from third-party makers to index the entire contents of PDFs, compressed files, images (GIF, TIFF, JPEG), and other files. Fortunately, many add-ins are free for noncommercial use.

The program places the MSN Search Deskbar on your Windows taskbar, folder windows, and Internet Explorer windows, as well as in Microsoft Outlook. It defaults to searching the desktop, the Web, or your e-mail, whichever is appropriate. You can also launch the Deskbar from the Start, All Programs menu.

Pop-up or context menus in most of the Deskbars give you access to the Options dialog box; there you can set which folders to index and where to store the index file. You can also set a keyboard shortcut for the Deskbar, and toggle the Deskbar between Web and local file searches via buttons in the pop-up results window.

You can refine search results by date, author, attachments (or mail with attachments), file properties, and other options.

The program did a good job of finding our test files, including audio and image files that had keywords embedded as comments. The exceptions were mail messages in Eudora and Thunderbird. But since these two programs aren't supported in the toolbar itself, the fault likely lies with the add-in that was supposed to add these files to our index. More troubling was the program's inability to locate an XML file saved by Microsoft Word, although we encountered no difficulty unearthing an XML file saved in another application. Even rebuilding the index didn't fix this problem.

Windows Desktop Search shows your search results (sorted by file type only) in a pop-up window as you type (see FIGURE 1). Press Enter or click Search Desktop to get the full results window; click an item in the pop-up results to open that file.

If you've installed the program's PDF add-in and you select a PDF to preview, you'll open a version of the Acrobat Reader right inside the preview pane, complete with toolbars (see FIGURE 2). Or if you select an audio file among your results, the preview pane will display the controls for playing the found sound.