From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

Search for files

From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

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Search for files

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- [Instructor] Finding lost files is a common computer activity. Press the Windows + E keyboard shortcut to bring up a File Explorer window. This search bar helps you locate files and folders on your computer. It's always visible in the folder window, but the controls are hidden until you search for something which can be frustrating. Even so, to search for a file, type its name, found files are shown here. File name matches appear atop the list and files that contain the word prog appear later. More importantly, the search options menu now appears. This menu remains accessible until you end the search. You limit the search here to subfolders or only the current folder. Here are options to search for the file by date modified, kind of file, file size, and then you see other options to search system files, compressed folders, and specifically file contents. As an example, say I just wanted to search for files named prog created in the last week, choose last week, and here's the list. More importantly, however, observe the search bar. You see the original name of the file I searched for here, and then it's followed by datemodified, all one word, colon, and then last week. This text clues you into the shortcuts available but not otherwise obvious that you can use with the search command. Close the search window. When you know the secret words, you can search by directly typing them here into the search box. So say, I want to look for file size:large. Here are the big files it found. Now, say, I just want to find those created in the last week, datemodified, one word, and then last week, two words, and nothing is found. Close the search. Here are some good search keywords to know: file name: followed by the name of the file to look for; type: followed by the file type such as png for a png image file; size: followed by a size word such as large or a specific size such as 100k. Other words are available as well, though these can help get you started and speed you on your way faster than that awkward method I showed earlier. I know this approach is a bit technical and nerdy, but it's faster than fumbling with a search tool the way it's implemented in the File Explorer window. Perhaps Microsoft will address these shortcomings in future versions of Windows.

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