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When I type stuff in the Windows 7 search box in Explorer, it keeps updating and searching as I type which is annoying, frustrating, and pointless. Is there a way to get Windows to knock it off and let me finish constructing my query and press Enter before it starts searching?

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Look away while typing? – mtone Apr 18 '11 at 21:17
@mtone, what‽ How does that stop the stupid thing from slowing my system to a crawl as it tries to search my drives before I’m even finished typing the query? Duh. – Synetech Apr 22 '11 at 21:27
@Synetech inc. Sorry, on a fast system with the most searches done in indexed locations, it is hardly noticable and typing is not delayed. Which I believe is the intent of this feature - that is quickly fetching results in the background. I can understand in some situations (older PCs or laptops, limited RAM, non-indexed folders) it may be annoying. – mtone Apr 28 '11 at 22:29
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@Synetech inc. - Just wanted to document this. You're the only person I've ever seen use an interrobang as one character, as it should be. I don't even remember the alt code to make it. – josmh May 24 '11 at 20:17
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@josmh, I don’t thing there is an ALT code because it is one of the really high ones (8253), which as far as my testing has determined, cannot be entered with Alt. Whenever I need one, I just Google ‘interrobang’ and copy the character. ;-) (I tried adding it to my hotkey/macro program that I use to insert other accented characters, true-quotes, fractions¼, etc. but it doesn’t support true Unicode so I couldn’t.) – Synetech May 24 '11 at 20:31
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4 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

Try turning off "find partial matches"

Choose Start > Documents. In the upper-left area, click the down-arrow next to Organize. Choose Folder and Search Options. Select the Search tab.

enter image description here

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Nope; it still searches as I type (which makes it really hard to type). – Synetech Mar 6 '11 at 3:56
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up vote 0 down vote

Microsoft radically changed the Search functionality with Vista and decided to stay with it with Windows 7. Some people may like it. I'm not a fan.

Ever since I started using the Everything Search Engine six months ago, I have not looked back.

It still searches while you type, but the results are amazingly fast.

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I already have good third-party solutions (Everything doesn’t work for FAT32 drives). I’m trying to fix Explorer’s search function (I’d even rather have the dog than this). – Synetech Mar 6 '11 at 3:54
lol...understood. Sorry I couldn't help. Please post your solution here if no one else finds one. I'd like to know the result. – ray023 Mar 6 '11 at 23:18
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up vote 0 down vote

I'm pretty sure this is a feature and cannot be turned off. Turning it off would essentially relegate the functionality back to XP.

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“Turning it off would essentially relegate the functionality back to XP.” …and make it usable again. – Synetech Apr 11 '11 at 19:27
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up vote 0 down vote

@Synetech I am right there with you. This has been infuriating me since day one of being forced to use Windows 7. As much as there was left to be desired from XP, XP feels like a dream compared to this torture.

I do not have a solution for the Explorer functionality, but my workaround is to pop open Notepad and type whatever I want to search for, then copy-paste that into WE. I do this for Google searches, too, now that Google behaves like W7.

My Notepad solution involves a keyboard shortcut. Put a shortcut to the notepad application on your desktop, right click it, go to Properties, type a shortcut key in the appropriate field. (I use "T".)

My sentiments are keyboard > mouse. So my process is: Ctrl + Alt + T, type my search, Ctrl + A (select all), Ctrl + C, Alt + Tab (change active window to WE), click search field, Ctrl + V, Enter.

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Interesting work-around. I use a similar approach to get around programs that retain formatting of copied text. Whenever I copy something (e.g., from a web-page) and want to paste just the text without HTML tags, I paste it into the Run dialog and copy it back to the clipboard. I use the Run dialog because it is not a separate program, so it is extremely fast to run and already has a hotkey to initiate it (Win+R). As for Google, you can disable Instant Search (which like many I think is horrible), by using the Search Preferences option. – Synetech May 18 at 19:28
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