Best Of

Best Of: Best Free Desktop Search Tools

If you’re like me you probably have hundreds of files all over your computer in different folders and sub folders and barely know where or how to find an important file you are looking for.Windows Vista has improved its search functionality quite a bit but it still has some problems, previous versions of Windows like XP weren’t that search friendly eather.Thats why you should use a free desktop search utility that not only can search your entire hard disk, it can also search your email client logs for specific emails, here are the top picks:

1) Copernic Desktop Search:Copernic Desktop Search allows you to instantly find files, emails, images, multimedia and more, that are located on your PC (not the Internet). It creates an initial index of your hard drive and provides an attractive and easy to use search interface that returns results instantly, as soon as you type in your keyword. It provides image thumbnails for picture matches, integrated preview with keyword highlighting and more. Copernic Desktop Search can also (optionally) index your web surfing history, as well as Contacts and Favorites. A very nice and easy to use tool to find files on your computer.

2) Google Desktop:Google Desktop brings the power of Googles search capabilities to your local computer. The program runs on your PC and maintains an index of your files, documents and even email messages – it supports Outlook, Outlook Express, MS Word, Excel, as well as text files and web surfing history. You can customize the indexing and choose which items to include, and also exclude specific documents or paths. To start searching, you just type your keyword in the browser based interface (runs locally, not on the web), and it returns lightning fast results of all items that match your search. Clicking on any of the search results, will open the file with the default application, or in case of email provide you with a text overview and reply options. The Google Desktop interface is similar to the online Google search, and can optionally be integrated with online search results.

3) Agent Ransack:Agent Ransack is a very powerful and easy to use tool for finding files and information on your hard drive fast and efficiently. You can search for file names or text in files with support for Regular expressions. When searching the contents of files Agent Ransack displays and highlights the actual text segments found in a separate window so you can quickly browse the results without having to open each file! The program features several wizards that can help you if you are not familiar with the use of Regular Expressions. Agent Ransack integrates into the Windows Find menu, so it is readily available to be used instead of the common Windows search dialog. The program also includes a very detailed help file.

Respected Contenders: Windows Live Search Toolbar.

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