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Sidebar | Quick Find | Deskbars | Outlook Integration | Home Page | Advanced Search | Results pages | Removing results | Preferences

Google Desktop includes Sidebar, a panel on your desktop which provides convenient, one-glance access to all sorts of personalized information. Sidebar includes the following plug-ins:

Every panel also supports the following panel features:

• Details Pane: Click once on an item in a panel and a window with more details will slide out of the panel. Only one details pane can be open at any given time in Sidebar.
• Expanded View: Click the title bar or "<<" button in the panel to display a longer list of items from that panel, including a scroll bar.
• Double-click to Open: Double-click an item in a panel to open it in a web browser.
• Panel Menu: Click the arrow button in a panel's title bar to display the panel's menu.
• Reorder: Change the order of the panels by dragging the title bar of the panel you want to move and dropping it into its new location.
• Resize: Change the height of a panel by dragging its top or bottom edge. The panel next to it will also change in height.
• Minimize: Compact a panel down to a single line by selecting the "Minimize" panel menu item.
• Restore: When a panel has been minimized, select the "Restore" panel menu item to have it pop back to its previous size.
• Options: Select the "Options" panel menu item to change a panel's settings.
• About: Select the "About" panel menu item to learn more about the panel.
• Remove: Select the "Remove" panel menu item to remove the panel from Sidebar. You can always add it back by select "Add/Remove Panels" in the Sidebar menu.
• Right-click menu: Right-click an item to open it, remove it, or take other actions.
• Tooltips: Tooltips are displayed to show additional information. For email, it includes the subject, from, to, and date. For other items, it generally shows the full title and source if the title is truncated.

Sidebar also offers the following general features:

• Sidebar Menu: Click the down arrow button in the upper right corner of the Sidebar to see a list of options.
• Add/Remove Panels: Select the "Add/Remove Panels" menu item to add new panels and remove existing panels. You can also add any ActiveX control available on your computer to Sidebar.
• Resize: Sidebar can be horizontally resized by dragging the left edge if it's docked to the right side of the screen, and vice versa, to a maximum width of half the width of your computer screen.
• Customize Alerts: Select the "Customize Alerts" menu item to enable plug-ins to display pop-up alerts that appear in the lower right corner of your screen. By default, you can enable alerts when Sidebar receives new web clips, news and email.
• Autohide: Select the "Auto-If this feature is enabled, Sidebar will slide onto your screen when your mouse is near the edge. Sidebar will disappear again once your mouse is no longer above Sidebar.
• Dock Sidebar: Dock Sidebar to either the left or right side of your screen. You can also change which side Sidebar is docked to by dragging the bar with the word "Google" in it to the left or right side of your screen.
• Minimize: You can click the minimize icon in the upper right of the sidebar to minimize to the Deskbar or Floating Deskbar.

Quick Find makes launching applications and searching your desktop easy and fast. From within any application, just type a few letters or words into Sidebar's search box and you'll see the top results pop up instantly. You can use Quick Find to launch applications without having to deal with the Start menu; for example, if you have Microsoft Word installed, you can launch it by just typing "wor" into the Sidebar search box and selecting "Microsoft Word" in the list of results that appears. You can also use Quick Find from the Deskbar and Floating Deskbar, which are described in a separate section.

Quick Find offers the following features:

• Quick List of Results: Launch applications and desktop search results by typing just a few letters or words in the search box. You can open a result by using the up/down arrows on the keyboard and pressing Enter or by clicking a result with your mouse. Each result displays the item's title/subject, a URL or file path or sender, and a snippet (if available).
• Keyboard Shortcut: You can type Windows+G or Ctrl+Alt+G to jump to the Sidebar or Deskbar search box.
• Search the Web, Desktop, and more: By default, Quick Find will search the web if you press Enter immediately after typing a query. In addition, under "Search More", you can search your desktop, Google Images, Groups, Froogle, Local, News, and access any custom searches that you created if you had the older version of the Google Deskbar installed.
• Tooltips: If you move your mouse over a result, you can get more information, including the full title/subject, full URL/path/sender's email address, recipient's email address, and date. This information can help you decide whether or not to open the item.
• See All Results in a Browser: By default, Quick Find will display up to 6 results. If there are more results available or if you'd like to see all the results in a web browser (to be able to access the cached view of specific items, for example), just click the "See x desktop results in the browser" item.
• Open Control Panel Items Quickly: Just type the name into the search box. For example, type "mouse" to jump to the Mouse item found in Control Panel.
• Right-click Menu: Right click any file result and choose "Open Folder" to open a window displaying the result's parent folder.
• Selection Wrapping: The up/down arrow keys wrap the selection around from bottom to top and vice versa.
• Launch URLs: Type a domain name or URL into the search box to jump to that site directly.
• Resizable: Resize the Quick Find window horizontally by dragging it at either edge.

Google Desktop provides two ways, in addition to Sidebar, to quickly do a desktop or web search without first having to go to a web page.

• Deskbar
  
  The Deskbar is a small search box in your Windows taskbar. Just type in your query and results will appear in Quick Find. You can access the menu and maximize the Sidebar with the buttons to the right of the search box.
  
  

• Floating Deskbar
  
  The Floating Deskbar is the draggable version of the Deskbar. It looks and works just like the Deskbar, except you can drag it to anywhere you want on your desktop. It will always float above all other windows, so it's always visible and easily accessible. It will first appear at the upper right corner of your screen.
  
  

• Deskbar Menu
  
  Just click on the triangle next to the Deskbar or Floating Deskbar to bring up its menu. You'll see options to Pause Indexing, see the indexing status, go to Preferences, go to the Desktop About page, choose between your display options, and close the Deskbar.
  
  Note: Only one of Sidebar, Deskbar and Floating Deskbar can be open at the same time.

You can use these advanced search operators when you do a desktop search:

• Phrase search
  If you enclose all or part of your query in quotation marks, Desktop will only return items that contain that exact quoted phrase. For example, if your query is ["Copyright 2005"], Desktop only returns items containing exactly that phrase. An item containing that phrase's words only in the sentence "In 2005, I filed for copyright" will not be returned.
  
  
• "-" search
  When put directly in front of a word, the - operator causes searches to not return items that contain that word. For example, results for the search [bats -baseball] would include all items in the Desktop cache that contain the word "bats," except for the items that also contain the word "baseball".
  
  
• "site:" search
  If you include the site: operator in your query, Desktop will only return results from the website you specify. For instance, a Desktop query of [help site:www.google.com] will return only pages you've seen from www.google.com that contain the word "help". Note there can be no space between the "site:" operator and the domain you specify.
  
  
• "filetype:" search
  You can restrict what type of files Desktop returns via the filetype: operator and an argument of either a file type extension or the full name of an Office application. For instance, if you search for [tax filetype:xls] or [tax filetype:excel], your search results will include only Excel files containing the word "tax". If you search for [filetype:abc], your results will include only files that have a .abc file extension. As with the site: operator, do not put any spaces between filetype: and its extension or type argument.
  
  
• Advanced email search
  You can restrict your search to look for matches within email message headers. The available email search operators are:
  • Subject:
  • To:
  • From:
  • Cc:
  • Bcc:

  Sample usage:

  • subject:spirit returns all emails with the word "spirit" in the Subject: field.
  • subject:"Will Eisner" returns all emails with the exact phrase "Will Eisner" in the Subject: field.
  • subject:(spirit eisner) returns all emails with both words "spirit" and "eisner" in the Subject: field. Both words must be present in the Subject: field, but they can be in any order and do not have to be next to each other.
  • subject:spirit eisner returns all emails with the word "spirit" in the Subject: field and the word "eisner" anywhere in the email, including the body.

  You can combine multiple email header restrictions in one query. For example, a search on [subject:spirit from:denny] will return only those email messages that have both "spirit" in their Subject: field and "denny" in their From: field. As with the other operators, you cannot have a space between any email header operator and its related search term.

You can also combine either or both the phrase search operator and the - operator with any of the site:, filetype: or email header operators. For example, a query for ["graphic novel" -comics from:denny] will only return those emails containing the exact phrase "graphic novel", not including the word "comics", and that have the word "denny" in their From: header.

Note: You cannot combine the site:, filetype:, and/or email header operators in a single query. Why? Because the site: operator can only return web history results, the filetype: operator can only return file results, and the email header operators can only return email results. If a query's operators require different result types, nothing can successfully match your entire query.

How does the Google Desktop search results page work?

By default, results are sorted by date. If you want to sort them by relevance to your query, just click the Sort by relevance link at the upper right of the page.

The Google Desktop search results page includes every type of item found in its index: files, emails, web pages, chats, and "other" which includes contacts, appointments, tasks, notes, and journal entries. Your results page also shows you how many results of each type were found for the query.

If you want to see just one type of result, click on the link for that type. For example, if you click on a 3 files link, you'll go to a page that shows only the 3 file results for the query. From a one-type-only results page, just click the All link to return to a complete results page.

You can also filter your results even further. After clicking the "Files" link, you will see options to filter by specific filetypes: Word, Powerpoint, Excel, HTML, PDF, Image formats (GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP), Audio formats (WAV, MP3, AAC), and Video formats (WMV, MPG, AVI). After clicking the "Email" link, you can also filter results by sender or recipient.

Files Results Page

Individual file results have seven parts:

• An icon indicating the file type:
  • Word file
  • Powerpoint file
  • Excel file
  • Text file
  • PDF file
  • Music file
  • Image file
  • Video file
• The file name, linked to the current version of the file itself.
• A brief snippet from the file with your search terms highlighted.
• The file's full pathname (where it's stored on your computer).
• A link to open the file in its folder, so that you can perform actions such as moving or emailing the file.
• A link telling you how many versions of this file are in your Desktop cache.
• The last time Desktop indexed a new version of the file (if the file already existed when you first installed Google Desktop, this will be the file's last modified date). The date is linked to the appropriate place in the Timeline view.

What happens if I click on the file name link?

The appropriate application (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, your default editor for text files, etc.) will open with the file's current contents. If the file no longer exists, you'll see an error message.

What happens if I click on the cached versions link?

• If there's only one cached version of this file on your computer, you're taken to a page showing that version.

  
  

  This page contains the file's text content; any Word or Powerpoint formatting isn't shown here.

• If there's more than one cached version, you're taken to a page listing all the cached versions.

  
  

  On this page, you'll see the total number of versions of the file and the file's complete pathname, which links to the file's current version.

  Each version is identified by the date and time it was copied into the Desktop cache (or, in the case of files that existed before you first installed Desktop, the last time the file was changed before the installation). The date/time links to that cached version of the file, and will take you to a single cached version page as previously described.

Email Results Page

Individual email results have up to seven parts:

• An icon indicating that it's an email and whether it has any attachments.
  • Email message.
  • Email message with attachment.
• A link consisting of the message's subject.
• A brief snippet from the email with your search terms highlighted.
• Who sent the message.
• The folder in which the email is stored (Outlook only).
• Link to open the email in the native application (e.g. Outlook, Gmail)
• If the email is part of a conversation thread, a link showing how many messages are in the thread.
• The date and time when this email was sent. The date is linked to the appropriate place in the Timeline view.

If you click on the "number of messages" link...

You'll go to a page listing each message in the thread, oldest first. For each message, you'll be shown who sent it (which is also a link to a page showing only this message), the first line or two of the message, and when it was sent.

From this page, you can also delete individual messages in the thread. Just click on the Remove emails link in the upper right corner of the page. You'll be taken to a page where you can delete individual messages from the cache (but not the message in your mailbox) the same way you can delete individual search results (see Removing Results).

If you click on the "Subject" link...

You'll see the entire email, along with these options before and after the message:

• Reply
• Reply to All
• Forward
• Compose
• View In Application (e.g. Outlook, Gmail)

Click any of these options to take that action for this email.

If the message is part of a thread...

The page showing you the email will also have links for Older, Newer, and View Entire Thread (followed by how many messages are in the thread). Use Older and Newer to move from one message to the next in the thread. View Entire Thread takes you to a page listing each message in the thread, just as if you'd clicked the number of messages link on the original results page.

To delete a message from your Google Desktop search cache...

Click the Remove email link in the upper right corner of the page. Remember, this only deletes the message from the Desktop cache, not from your email application. If you look at this message again while Desktop is running, it will go back into your cache.

Chat Results Page

Individual chat results have four parts:

• An auto-generated title based on the contents of the chat.
• A brief snippet from the chat with your search terms highlighted.
• The buddy name of the person you were chatting with.
• The date and time when the chat happened. This is linked to the appropriate place in the Timeline view.

If you click on the linked first line of a chat result...

You'll see the entire chat and information about it:

http://www.somewebsite.com
https://www.myinfo.com