Question about Search Indexing locations and exclusions.
I just installed Build 10130 and I'm having some trouble with some apps (my Steam game shortcuts) not showing up in search results, even though they appear in the All Apps section of the start menu.
I checked the Indexing options and saw that C:\Program Data\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu is included, but my user-based start menu folder in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu lives is excluded along with the rest of the appdata folder.
I get why I wouldn't want all of AppData indexed for searching, but when I manually added my user-based start menu folder to the indexing locations, those shortcuts still refuse to show up in the search results.
My question is if exclusions take precedent over any possible subfolder that may be included in another location entry? Has anyone else run into the same problem? Any workarounds?
6 comments · 86% upvoted · other discussions
By default, if you remove all default indexed items and just add the local disk (C:), four items are EXCLUDED: Data; Start Menu; AppData; AppData.
Under almost all circumstances, the files in these specific folders contain information that is not useful to index and search through and would really cause the indexing system to work overtime. You should be fine just going along with the default settings.
This is for Windows 7, but will give you some insight into the rationale behind those settings: http://sourcedaddy.com/windows-7/default-system-exclusion-rules.html
TL;DR - Leave the default settings
rascus_ [OP] 1 points · Nov 2015
Thanks for the reply. I guess it's the fault of the programs for putting their shortcuts in non-indexed locations?
applebond420 1 points · Nov 2015
You shouldn't have a problem with that. All the programs you want to search through should be part of the search set and not exclusively be part of those four locations. Note that application data IS stored elsewhere, the "App Data" that is excluded is very specific to particular directories and not to be taken literally.
rascus_ [OP] 1 points · Nov 2015
I'm not sure I understand your reply.
My issue is that start menu shortcuts that live in
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menuappear in the start menu, but when using search in the start menu, they never appear in the results (as that location is not indexed). Only shortcuts that are inC:\Program Data\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menuare returned in the results, even though the contents of the start menu is a combination of both of those folders. This effectively splits the start menu into two invisible classes of searchable and non-searchable.Ideally, either only a single folder should be used, or the
%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menufolder should be added to the index.applebond420 1 points · Nov 2015
Do you need to search within the shortcuts that lie in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu? If you don't absolutely need to search through the items, indexing them isn't necessary. You're right that there is an incongruent folder structure in your case. Don't fix it unless you need to was my point.
rascus_ [OP] 1 points · Nov 2015
Like I said, there are programs that put their shortcuts in that location, meaning I have to find them by hand in the Start Menu when I want to run them instead of just typing their name which I usually do. I guess I can try just moving everything from one folder to another and see what happens.