How to find files on your computer. How to find the necessary files on your computer
The large capacity of modern disks allows you to save many documents or multimedia files. Therefore, without initially subjecting your directories to a certain structuring, you can end up with complete chaos on your hard drive. If this has already happened and you have forgotten the location of any files, it will not be easy to find them without knowing how to use the built-in search of the operating system.
Search by file name
Knowing the name of the document, you will make your task much easier and after a short period of time you will already see the file you are looking for on your computer screen. There are several ways to find it by name in Windows 7.
Via the Start menu
The operating system's Start menu has a search box. To find the required document through this field, you must:
- Click on the “Start” button.
- Find the field.
- Enter the name by which the search will be carried out.
- Review the proposed results.
After entering the expected name of the document, you will immediately be shown a list of found files:
IN in this case in Windows 7, a document called "Agency" was searched for. As you can see from the previous screenshot, the first option offered is the file you are looking for.
How to find it in a folder?
There is another way to find documents. In every directory Windows Explorer 7 there is a corresponding field:
Therefore, knowing the file name and its location, you can:
- Open the desired folder in Explorer.
- Enter the name of the document in the field.
- Get the result.
In this example, the search was conducted using the "Biology" template. As a result, the following files and folders were found:
Knowing the location of the object is not necessary. It simply speeds up the operating system's search for files. Because modern computers have high productivity, long stay necessary information with a known location and with an unknown one there is practically no difference. If you have no idea in which folder or even on which drive the file is saved, you can search throughout your computer:
Additional filters
With common file names, you run the risk of seeing several thousand options, making it difficult to select the right document. If you know the modification date of the file or its size, you can specify them when searching (by entering a pattern in the field, you will see suggested filters):
You can also scroll down the found list and limit the search range by clicking the “Other” button:
After this click, Windows 7 will display the settings window:
In this window you should:
- Mark the desired folders to be searched.
- Confirm your selection with the “OK” button
After these steps, the number of found elements in the list will decrease significantly, so finding the one you need will become much easier.
How to find inside files?
The methods discussed above make it easier to search by name. But what if you don’t know the name? In this case, you should approximately know the text of the document you are looking for. Windows 7 can find files based on their content. This function was not introduced in vain, because it is easier for a computer user to remember what is inside a document than to try to remember its name.
By default, this method of finding files is disabled in the operating system. To enable it, you must:
- Open "Computer" in Explorer.
- Press and release the ALT key (this action allows the top horizontal menu, which is normally hidden).
- Select the “Service” item.
- Go to the “Folder Options” sub-item.
After clicking on the indicated under Windows menu 7 will display the following window:
In it you should:
- Go to the “Search” tab.
- Check the box responsible for scanning the contents of objects;
- Confirm the changes with the “Apply” button.
The procedure is shown in the following screenshot:
This method significantly slows down finding the desired object, but sometimes it is simply irreplaceable (for example, if several people use the computer). So if you don't want to wait and don't want to waste time scanning inside all documents, you can turn on or off this option at your own discretion. After changing the settings, the file search is carried out in the same way as described above, without any changes.
An example of finding a document by its content
You can find an object using any phrase, but it is especially easy to search for a file with poems. After all, it’s easier to remember a line from a poem than a phrase from an accounting report. However, in the second case, a few of the most frequently occurring words in a document will help you find any report.
For example, you have a document somewhere with Shakespeare's sonnets, and you remember the phrase from one sonnet: "Will you compare me." To find this collection on your computer, you need to:
- Open “Computer” in Explorer.
- Go to the desired folder (if known).
- Enter the phrase you remember in the search field.
- Get the result.
Any information can be found in this way, provided that it is stored on your disk.
If you have forgotten where you saved a folder or file, do not despair, the data will not be lost. Your computer is so smart that it will help you find necessary documents and indicate their location.
If you want to find a program installed on your computer, first look on the “desktop” for a shortcut that may have been created during installation. If it is available, look in the shortcut properties for the address of the program location. To do this, hover your mouse over the shortcut and press the right button. Select Properties, go to the Shortcut tab. In the column " Work folder" indicates the location of this program (usually on drive “C”).
Searching for folders on your computer is not at all difficult. You can check it right now!
Modern hard disks capable of storing thousands or even tens of thousands of files. Sometimes, due to absent-mindedness or inattention, it happens that you either saved a file in the wrong folder and did not remember its location, or you do not know exactly the name of the file and the folder in which it is located.
In this case, it may be very difficult to find the file on your hard drive and you should use the information search tool included in the operating system.
The search program is launched very simply: Start - Search or My Computer - Search:
After that, on the left side of the window you will see a search menu:
As you can see, you can only search for pictures or text files, but the most commonly used item is Files and folders, which allows you to search for everything among everything.
If you select this item, then in the next window you will be asked to enter the information to be used for the search, i.e. you must indicate everything you know about the file you are looking for.
The easiest option is to search for a file by name and type, that is, by its extension.
If you know the file name along with the extension, enter them in the top field, separating the name from the extension with a dot
(For example: readme.txt- Where readme this is the file name and txt– file extension indicating its format).
If you are looking text file, then in the second field you can enter the text that is present in the file you are looking for (and you are absolutely sure of this).
Select your search location from the drop-down list below. If you know for sure that the file is located on drive C, then there is no point in searching for it everywhere hard drive. If you don’t know where the file is located, then look for it everywhere, specifying the search location My computer.
The search begins after pressing the button Find. As you find the files and folders you need, their icons will appear on the right side of the window. The search may take some time, but if the required file has already appeared on the right side of the window, then you can interrupt the search procedure by clicking the button Stop.
The file search program allows you to create various queries. You can search by file creation date, size, search in hidden folders, in subfolders, archives, etc. You can specify all this data by opening the data entry fields using the corresponding buttons (see figure).
But this is not used often, and therefore we will not dwell on it in detail.
Much more important for effective search be able to use some tricks, or rather search patterns.
It often happens that the file name is not fully known or you are not sure of its correct spelling. In this case, when searching, the missing part of the file name or extension is replaced special characters substitutions.
Symbol *
replaces any number of any characters. For example, if you put an asterisk instead of a file name, then the search for all files with specified extension. IN in this example will search for all pictures with jpg extension on the entire hard drive:
If you remember the file name, but do not remember (or do not know) its format, then substitute an asterisk instead of the extension (for example: book.*).
Symbol ?
replaces only one character in the pattern. For example, the pattern r?d.* will find all files (with any extension) whose names consist of three letters, begin with the character r and end with the character d.
If the file name consists of several words, then when searching, these words must be enclosed in quotation marks:
Thus, by adjusting various search parameters, you can significantly improve its effectiveness.
When the search is finished (or stopped), on the right side of the window you will receive a list of files that match given conditions search.
You can work with these files (open them), but sometimes it is useful to navigate to the folder where the desired file is located.
To do this, click on this file right click mouse and context menu select the appropriate item:
After this, the folder in which this file is located will open, and the file itself will be highlighted.
Starting to use new system, I think you might have encountered that the search for files in Windows 7 is organized a little differently compared to others operating systems. Now I will tell you about where the search is in Windows 7, and also look at an example of searching for files in Windows 7.
Setting up search in Windows 7
The Windows 7 menu has a built-in search bar that allows you to find not only menu programs by their name, but also files and folders. I should note that not all files are searchable, but only indexed ones, that is, those to which the system has assigned a special number called “index”. If your files and folders are in standard folders, then you don't need to configure indexing.
To make the settings, open the “Start” menu and type “search options” and select “Change search options for files and folders” in the results.
In the “Search” tab, the parameters should be as in the picture below.
I do not advise you to choose a search by file name, although at first glance this seems like a good idea, in practice it will lead to the fact that the search will not only take an incredibly long time, but will also return a lot of irrelevant results, and therefore will not be effective. In this window, all settings are set optimally; there is no need to change anything.
Now, similarly to the previous case, we find it in the “Indexing Options” menu. In the window that opens, click “Edit” and now we can select all your data folders for indexing. You should not choose system ones Windows folders, select only the data you need. There is no need to choose like Plyushkin. What if it comes in handy!?
One more useful function settings is to configure indexing by extension. Click the "Advanced" button and select the "File Types" tab. Here you can add indexing of the contents of files that you will search by content. For example, you want to search documents by content. Click on “doc” and select “Index properties and contents of files” at the bottom.
Now that you have configured everything, you can click “OK” and “OK” again to save the results and let’s start searching in Windows 7 in practice!
Search in the Start menu
In the previous paragraph we easily found necessary programs in the Start menu using the search bar, I will only add that now that your indexing system is configured, you can search not only programs, but also all the files and folders you need, and they will be conveniently grouped by type.
To consolidate, so to speak, the material, let’s repeat the steps that have already been voiced in the article. To start the search, you need to click on Start and enter a word or phrase of an element at the very bottom.
Search using Windows Explorer
In the previous chapter of the article, you could open the search window from the start menu, the same effect can be achieved if you open “File Explorer” or “Computer”. You will see a search bar at the top right of the window. You can enter there the file name, part of the contents of files or their extension for which you previously configured a content search.
But this is not all the possibilities. You can enter various filters there: type, modification date, author and others. You can see the filters by placing the cursor in the search field in one of the “Library” folders; the wider the field, the more filters are visible. Each of the “Library” folders has its own filters, for example, duration music file or the date the image was taken.
You can also see that you can now sort your search results by selecting a method on the right top corner window, and also, scrolling down the results to the end, repeat the search in other “Library” folders.
And finally, I’ll add that a similar search for files in Windows 7 is available everywhere. You can open any folder and start searching in it. And it's very convenient!
For those who are considering upgrading to Windows 8:
After understanding the extension of the lost file, for example, “.zip”, all that remains is to enter it in the “Search” field and press Enter. A search on your computer will immediately display a list of files with this extension. From them we already select the one we need.
Rules for searching files on a computer by size
Many users may object - video files can have many extensions, what should you do to search in this case? One of our clients once lost a missing film and asked for advice on this issue.
We noticed that on the user’s computer all films were in the “.avi” format. It would seem that you just need to enter the extension into the search, and everything will work out right away. But not everything turned out to be not so simple; finding the file on the computer was not so easy. Therefore, it was decided to search the desired file by volume.
The client's total video files were approximately 1.45 GB in size. Therefore, it was quite reasonable to assume that the lost file had a similar size. Therefore, it was enough to do simple procedure System.Size:>1000MB, to search the computer memory for files larger than 1 GB.
Based on the search results, a list of 20 video files appeared, including a file without an extension at all. But just by the title itself one could guess that this was exactly the missing film. All that remained was to add the “.avi” extension to the file – and again you could enjoy watching the video. Later we managed to understand that our client’s acquaintances were just making a joke and removed the extension.
How to find hidden files in Windows OS
Sometimes Windows assigns the “Hidden” attribute to some files - as a result virus attacks or system failure. Because of this, files cannot be seen or found even through “Search”, if opposite the item “Show hidden files and folders" is not checked. Although nothing will happen to the files themselves.
To make hidden files visible, open the “Control Panel”, then go to “Folder Options” - “View”. Next to the “Show hidden files and folders” item, check the box and click OK. After that sometimes lost file is immediately on the desktop. Or you can find it by searching by extension or name, as we discussed earlier.
Search files by their content
For example, if you lose text documents from Microsoft Office Word, Notepad, OpenOffice or other programs. When working with text, some of the content is still stored in the user’s memory. Therefore, in the search, enter part of the text, press Enter and find the desired document.
Although it should be borne in mind that on the old and slow computer the search process may take long time. Upgrading your PC is something you can think about while you wait for the results.
Total Commander for easy search of necessary files
Popular and convenient file manager, with which it is possible quick search files on the computer according to several parameters simultaneously - extension, name, content. To do this, you need to set the search location in the program (for example, C:), then go to “Commands” and “Search files” (or press the hotkey combination Alt+F7).