How do I conveniently search through Libraries in Windows 8?

Question

In Windows 7, I took the habit of putting most of my frequently accessed disk areas as Libraries - there were about a dozen. Typing a word in the Start menu would then give me a summary of matches by Library. For example, searching for "WPF" would tell me that I've got some results in the Books library, in the Coding library and a few other PDFs in the Downloads library, one of which I could then expand to see all results within.

In Windows 8, that functionality appears to be gone. The Search function in the Charms Bar lists tons of results by type (Documents, Pictures, et cetera) but not by Library. This is practically useless since Documents contains hundreds of .txt and .cs files, a few of which might be Books or Downloads.

The only option I found is to go into Explorer and use the search bar in the Library section. However, there again, all search results are mixed together, and I can't seem to find a way to know which Library each result came from (in the Details view, I didn't find a Library column I could add).

So, if I want to know which Library contains stuff about a given topic, I have to search the Libraries one by one. Very inconvenient. Is Microsoft slowly deprecating libraries?

Any tips? How else can I search through libraries?

Answer 1

These is an excerpt from Windows 8 Dummies

If you choose the Documents library, for example, the Documents Properties dialog box appears

Click the Add button.

The Include Folder in Documents window appears.

Navigate to the folder you want to add, click the folder, click the Include Folder button, and click OK.

The library automatically updates itself to display that folder’s contents, sorting the contents into groups.

You may add as many folders to a library as you want, which is handy when your music files are spread out across many places. The library automatically updates to show the folders’ latest contents.

To remove a folder from a library, follow the first step but click the folder to be removed and click the Remove button.

So, when you drop a file into a library, which folder does that file really live in? It lives in the folder known as the Default Save Location — the folder that currently holds the honor of receiving incoming files. The Whole detailing can be found here.

The Windows 8 Library can be managed by a tool called Librarian try finding it from Main Screen or download the latest release 3.0 from here.