How do I perform advanced searches in Windows Media Player?

To search for a specific song, album, or artist, type one or more words in the search box. For example, to find all song titles, album titles, and artist names that contain the word "Prince," type Prince in the search box.

Note that if you type a four-digit number by itself in the search box, the Player will search for songs and albums that were released in that year in addition to songs and album titles containing that number. To narrow the search results for a song or album title that contains a four-digit number, such as the Prince song "1999," include one or more additional words in your search query. For example, to find the Prince song "1999," type 1999 Prince in the search box.

To exclude an item, use NOT or a hyphen (-). For example, type "Dido" NOT "Life for Rent" to view all songs by Dido except those that are on the "Life for Rent" album. Or, type -Rock to see all songs except those whose genre is Rock. Note that NOT must be typed in capital letters.

To search for an exact phrase, enclose it in quotes ("). For example, type "Easy Listening" to search for items that contain the entire phrase.

To combine a search, use OR. For example, to search for all songs by Neil Diamond or Barbra Streisand, type "Neil Diamond" OR "Barbra Streisand". Or, type Rock OR Jazz to find all songs whose genre is Rock or Jazz. Note that OR must be typed in capital letters.

To search on two attributes, use AND or a space. For example, type "Dido" AND "Life for Rent" to find only those songs by Dido that are on the "Life for Rent" album. Or, type Composer:Beethoven Conductor:"Gerard Schwartz" to find music that was composed by Beethoven and also had Gerard Schwartz as the conductor. Note that AND must be typed in capital letters.

To restrict your search to a particular media information attribute, use the format Attribute:Item you are searching for. For example, type Genre:Rock to find songs whose genre is Rock. Or, type Composer:Beethoven to find all music that was composed by Beethoven. The following table shows the various examples of search words and how they are used.

Note that search is not case sensitive, except when you are doing combined searches using NOT, OR, or AND. Also note there are no spaces between the search word, the colon, and the text you type in. Quotes are only needed for multi-word search phrases that are common in album titles and the full names of artists, and if you want to search for an exact phrase.

If you are in a library category that does not use the search criteria you specify, such as searching for an artist name from within the Genre category, the Player will search all other categories in the library and provide a list of any matches found in the Details pane. You can also see any matches found by clicking the drop-down arrow of the search box.

To quickly clear the search box of previous search criteria, click the Clear Search button .