Windows 7 - How to search

I've struggled to do a basic file search in Vista and now Windows 7. I open explorer and in the top right seach box type the name of the file that I'm looking for such as file.doc. This file exists in my documents folder. This folder is indexed. It is never found. If I email this file to myself, it is found. If this file is mentioned in another document, the referencing document is found. A few other files are found with no reason given. My file is never found.

I search for .doc and on my machine that ought to result in a thousand hits. Nothing.

I find only two filters. I can filter by file size. Hum, I never know the size of my file nor do I care. I can not concieve of why anyone would search by file size. If you do, please help me to understand why.

The other filter asks something like how old is this file? I don't know and if I did, how am I suppose to indicate an age? With XP I was at least presented with input boxes or could use a graphical calendar to select a range of dates or before/after a specific date.

I know that I am looking for a file only, so why am I being forced to search for emails? Besides, if I was looking for an email, why wouldn't I open outlook and begin there? Does Microsoft think that we've stopped using files? I assumed that the search feature was a bug in Vista and this was one of my top five reasons for stopped us upgrading to Vista at work. They never fixed this problem in Windows 7.

I've read a few blogs praising the search feature, only they don't use the feature or tell me how to use this feature.

So, if you can help, please tell me how to use search in Windows 7.

Imagine you were running low on disk space. You might search by file size because you want to quickly locate larger data files so you can either delete them or move them to another drive to free up space.

I and some others on this forum have given up on Windows Search, while others continue to use it.

Instead, I use Search Everything from voidtools.com

Very simple, very quick. Can be configured to search all drives or just C. Makes a database the first time you run it--that might take a few minutes. After that, each time you open it, it updates the database, which normally is either instantaneous or at most a couple of seconds.

Enter your search term in the one and only search box and results are instantaneous.

Shortcoming for some people: it searches ONLY file names, not content of those files.

the truth is that the built in desktop search ms has given us is really lacking. i personally prefer to keep my file nice and organized and i've never had trouble finding even old ones, but if you need the ability to search your files i'd try one of the alternatives like what google desktop or copernic