If dragging and dropping is just a bit to slow for sending files to your cloud syncing service of choice, this little Windows trick will put it one click away.

This actually works for any folder or app, and we've featured how to do it before—but it's sometimes hard to see when the Send To menu is actually useful. This is one of those cases. To add Dropbox to your Send To menu, just open up Windows Explorer and type this in the navigation bar:

 %APPDATA%/Microsoft/Windows/SendTo 

Press Enter, and then open up another Explorer window. Create a shortcut of your Dropbox, Google Drive, Skydrive, or other cloud syncing folder and drag it to the SendTo folder you just opened up. That's it! Now, whenever you right-click on a file or folder, you can just click Send To > Dropbox and it'll appear in your Dropbox folder. Be sure to check out previously mentioned DropPub, too, for an easy way to send them to your public folder and get a shareable link.

Quickly Send Files to Dropbox, Google Drive or SkyDrive from Windows 7 | NirmalTV.com

OS X's Spotlight is a great tool for finding that file you lost or launching apps, but it can do a lot more than just find the occasional file. Here are some of the coolest Spotlight tips, features, and shortcuts to make your Mac a time-saving, file-searching powerhouse.

Make Advanced Search Queries

Spotlight's beauty lies in its simplicity. It's a single search bar that can find nearly anything on your machine with a few keystrokes. However, if you need to perform more advanced searches, you can do so without ticking a bunch of boxes and filling out advanced search forms. You just need to use a few operators—not unlike the operators you'd use on Google or Gmail. These include:

• Boolean operators like AND, OR, and NOT to to include or exclude terms. For example, invoice NOT paypal or invoice -paypal will find you all files that contain the word invoice and don't contain the word "paypal", which can be useful for filtering out certain items. You could even go more advanced with parentheses and quotes, like invoice AND credit NOT (paypal OR "google checkout").
• You can search for files of a specific type by using the kind operator, e.g. invoice kind:pdf.
• You can search for files from a specific date range using operators like created or modified, e.g. invoice modified:yesterday for something modified yesterday, or invoice created:1/1/2012-4/10/2012 to find something created in between January 1st and April 10th.

These are just a few examples of the advanced searches you can make. Experiment with common operators to see what else you can find.

Make Calculations and Look Up Words.

This one's pretty well-known, but it bears repeating. If you need a quick calculation done, there's no reason to open up the Calculator app. Just type your calculation into Spotlight. Whether it's something simple like 2+2 or something as complicated as sqrt(16)/2*(55.6+9). Just type it in and the answer will show up at the top of your results. You can even highlight it and press Cmd+C to copy the answer to your clipboard, for pasting in another program.

You can do this same thing with words. Just type a word into Spotlight and it'll show you the definition. You can click on the definition (or highlight it and press Enter) to view the full thing, or press Cmd+C to copy it for pasting into another app.

Copy or Move Files From the Search Menu

Need to copy a file to your desktop, Dropbox, or other location? No need to dig through your file system to find it. Just search for it in Spotlight, highlight it in the results list, and press Cmd+C. Then, you can paste that file wherever you want with Cmd+V in the Finder. It'll even work for contacts and email messages (it'll paste a .vcard or .emlx file).

Alternatively, you can drag that file out of the Spotlight results to copy it to a new location, or hold Command and drag it to move it to a new location. If you hold Command and Option while dragging, it'll create an Alias to that file if you want quick access to it from your desktop or another folder.

View a Search Result in The Finder

Half the time, when I'm looking for a file, it's because I don't actually know where it is, or its buried so far in the Finder that I don't want to click around the file system to get there. Searching for it in Spotlight will get you the file, but you can also use this keyboard shortcut to view that file's parent directory. Just highlight the file and press Cmd+Enter (or Cmd+Click on the file) to view it in the Finder. It's immensely handy for searches where you need to do more than just open the file.

Get a File's Info and File Path

If you want to see information about a file—like what kind of file it is, how big it is, where it resides, and more, you can just highlight it and press Cmd+I. This will bring up that file's Get Info window, just like it would if you were viewing it in the Finder. If you just want to know the path to that file, you don't need to open up the Get Info window; you can just highlight the file and press Cmd+Option.

Quick Look a File From the Search Results

If you want to get a slightly closer look at an image, document, or other quick look-compatible file, you can just highlight the file and press the Command key. Alternatively, you can just hover over it with your mouse. You'll get a little popup showing a bit of info about the file, as well as a preview. It isn't as large as the actual Quick Look window in the Finder is, but sometimes it'll do the trick. If you need a closer look, you can always press Cmd+Enter to show the file in the Finder, then hit Spacebar to bring up the regular Quick Look window.

Got any other cool Spotlight shortcuts or tips that we missed? Share them with us in the comments below, and enjoy all your extra seconds saved with Spotlights built-in time savers.

Windows 7's search function kind of sucks. You can only find what you're looking for half the time, and you never know why. Here's how to make Windows search work the way you want it to.

Perform Your Search From the Start Menu

For the longest time, I'd open up Windows Explorer and start typing in the search bar, and I'd rarely find anything. This is because Windows Explorer only searches the folder you're in—not your entire computer. If you have Libraries open in Explorer, it'll only search your libraries (which, to be fair, it says in the search bar—but it's very easy to blow past that). If you aren't sure where the file is that you're looking for, open up the start menu and search from there. It'll search your entire computer for files, folders, and programs matching those terms. If you want more detailed results, you can then click "See More Results" to bring up a detailed search results window. But thinking that you can shortcut your way to the detailed results by opening up Explorer first will get you nowhere.

Search the Contents of Your Files

By default, Windows does search the contents of your files, meaning if your search term shows up inside a document (but not in the file name), it'll show up in search results. However, for some reason, this only works some of the time. I've had certain files come up for one search term and not another even though both terms appeared somewhere in the document. I found the best way to improve content searching is to open up Windows Explorer and head to Organize > Folder and Search Options, then go to the Search tab. From there, check the "Always search file names and contents" radio button.

This feature doesn't seem to do at all what it describes in my tests. When the default option is checked, it can't always find the contents of indexed files. When I check the second option, it seems to find all the contents of any file I search for, which is exactly what I want (and without significant speed decreases, as it claims). Despite references to the contrary, neither option searches unindexed locations. I've tested this on two separate computers and it seems to work fine, despite what the option says it does—so give it a shot and see what happens for you. And if anyone can explain to me what this option is supposed to do—if different than the above—I'm all ears.

Choose Which File Extensions Can Be Searched By Content

Now that you can search by the contents of your files, you've probably found that a few of them still aren't searchable—most notably file types Windows doesn't think you want to search, like .conf or .sh files (if you're a Cygwin user). To search the contents of a file Windows doesn't know, go to the Start Menu and search for "Indexing Options". Choose the top result that comes up and then click the Advanced button. Under the File Types tab, you can add a new extension to the list, or edit any extension on the list to index the contents of the file. You can also uncheck any file extension to stop search from indexing that file type.

Add Folders to Your Index

By default, Windows has a pretty good idea of what locations you want indexed. It searches your Start Menu, your Users folder, and your Offline files. If you have moved any folders in your Users folder, or are storing something useful elsewhere on your drive, you can add that folder to the index in one of two ways. Note that the more folders you add, the slower Windows search becomes, so don't just add your entire C: drive—pick your folders carefully to keep it fast and useful.

The easiest way is to include it in one of your libraries. Windows Explorer automatically indexes all your libraries, so either create a new one or right-click on an applicable library and go to Properties to add a folder to it. That folder will then be added to your index.

Alternatively, you can go back to Indexing Options (by searching for it in the Start Menu) and clicking the Modify button to add a new folder to the index. This is useful if you want to index a folder but don't want it to appear in any of your Windows 7 libraries.

Manually Type In Your Search Filters

If you want to search within a specific folder, you might find that searching from Windows Explorer's search box offers you a number of search modifiers to refine your terms, like "Date Modified", "Kind", "Type", and more. What you may not realize is that these filters change depending on what folder you're in. Usually it's helpful, changing them to Artist/Album/Title in the Music folder, or "Date Taken" and "Tags" in the pictures folder. If you ever want a filter that isn't shown, however, you can always just type it in yourself (e.g. datemodified:last week invoice1). In fact, it isn't unlike searching Google in this way—you can also use AND and OR operators too, plus quotes if you're looking for a specific phrase. You can also change what type of file a certain folder is optimized for, which will change the search filters available to you in that folder. For more examples of advanced filters and operators, check out Microsoft's page on the subject.

These tips are simple, and some of them may seem obvious to veteran Windows user, but I've been frustrated with Search for months and these tips have made it a million times more useful. Of course, if you really want speedy and powerful searches, you could try a program like previously mentioned Everything, too. Got any of your own tips for improving Windows' search feature? Sound off in the comments below.

Windows: One feature I miss from my Mac when I move to my Windows PC is the ability to highlight a group of files, right-click them, and select "New Folder with Selection" to create a folder and automatically fill it with the items I've selected. Files 2 Folder is a free Windows shell extension that does just that—and it even asks you what you'd like to name the folder when it's completed.

Files 2 Folder is similar to previously mentioned Smart Folders, but works a bit better. First of all, it doesn't require you do anything different than you're used to—you can still right-click to create a new folder, the way you probably do already.

All you have to do is select the files you want in that folder, and the app handles the rest. Plus, unlike Smart Folders, it doesn't keep you from opening a file with an application by dragging and dropping the file onto the app. It fits into your workflow a bit easier and doesn't stop you from creating folders your usual way. FIles 2 Folder is free, and works wherever Windows does (It claims 64-bit Windows isn't supported, but I tested it on Windows 7 x64, and it worked just fine.)

Files 2 Folder | Skwire Empire via Into Windows