Windows Desktop Search

Windows Desktop Search

Windows Desktop Search (WDS) is the free search search application for the desktop created by Microsoft. Once installed, WDS builds an index of the files on your computer. Building the index can take several hours, but once the index is built, you will get nearly instant results when you search for a file. WDS is much faster than the search capabilities that were built into XP, and the search results are more accurate.

WDS can index and search a long list of file types. WDS can search the full text of Microsoft Office Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, Outlook emails, MSN Messenger \ Live Messenger conversations, and pages you've viewed on the Web recently. You can also get plugins (IFilters) that let you search the full text of other file types, including Adobe PDFs.

In addition, WDS also indexes the name and metadata of many other types of files. As a result, WDS makes it easy to find music, movies, pictures, and other kinds of files on your computer.

To learn more about WDS, click on one of the links below. To get WDS, see the links in the sidebar.