Let Google Desktop find your data quickly
Overview
Would you like to locate that email, last price paid for an item or product announcement quickly? Google Desktop allows you to locate that information in just two taps of the CTRL key.
Google Desktop is a free application developed by Google and the programs main focus is to help you locate information quickly that is stored in your computer. Upon initial installation of Google Desktop, the program will begin to index the files stored on your computer. This could take some time based on the amount of data and the size of your computer’s hard drive. You should plan to install Google Desktop and let the computer index the file overnight. Indexing all of your computer data can take system resources, so wait until your computer is free from use. Once the system has indexed your files, only the data that changes will be indexed reducing or eliminating any type of slow down during regular use.
Outlook and Outlook Express email can also be indexed, just remember that Google Desktop only indexes those files when the email program is running.
Installation and Setup
First step is to download Google Desktop from here: Download Google Desktop
Some versions of Internet Explorer will display a yellow warning bar at the top of the browser window.
You must right mouse click and choose to “Download the file” from the open menu.
Select “Run”, then “Open” at the next window prompt.
Now choose “Run” to begin the install of the program.
This window offers you some choices on how you want to use Google Desktop. The program can provide you some additional features like a sidebar with gadgets to update you on news, weather and other data points you add. For our example we are just interested in indexing our hard drive to find information quickly, so we have unchecked :
The sidebar with Gadgets
Under additional settings e have unchecked:
Set Google as your homepage and default browser search
Improve Google Desktop by sending crash reports and anonymous usage data
Once the program is installed, you will have an icon in your system tray (lower right corner of your computer screen) that looks like a multi-colored swirl.
As your roll over with the icon with your mouse, you will get an indexing update. At this point open your email program so email files can also be indexed and call it a night. Indexing can take some time based on the size of your hard drive and how much data you have to index.
Once indexing is complete, click on the multi-colored swirl icon in the system tray to search for your data. When you single right click on the system tray icon you will see a menu of choices. If indexing is slowing your computer down too much, then you can put it to sleep.
The system tray icon also allows you to turn on the desktop side bar with gadgets or use a floating search bar.
Spend some time working through the options you have here in the system tray menu. This is the area where you can turn back on your desktop gadgets using the sidebar feature.
Another way to access the search bar is by quickly by tapping on the CTRL key twice.
Enter in the data you are looking for and the Desktop application will begin to filter and show you local files and provide you the ability to search on the web as well.
Click on the item that fits what you are looking for the Google Desktop will take you to the information. If is it an Excel file and you have Excel installed, it will open Excel and display the file. If the file is a webpage, your default browser is opened and you will be shown the page.
Quickly and easily, find your data with no fuss and no muss. Once your data is indexed the system will them only index files that are added to your system.
