In this article, we'll look at finding files and folders in the Windows XP operating system.
If your computer is running Windows 7, you can refer to the note: "".
It can be useful, for example, when the files on the computer are not organized into folders sufficiently, i.e. when it is difficult to find something on the computer on your own.
Also, searching for files and folders is suitable when everything in the computer is organized, but you just want to find some information faster.
In Windows XP, the search for files and folders is fairly well provided and organized.
Finding files in Windows XP from the Start menu
To find a file or folder on your computer, click on the button Start and further on Search as shown in the picture:
We are taken to a menu that allows us to choose what we want to find. The most commonly used search categories are: search for images, music and videos, search for documents, and search for files and folders:
Let's take a closer look at these three main features.
Find pictures, music, or videos on your computer
Choosing the first search option, we get to an additional window in which:
1. We choose what we want to find: images and photos, music or video
2. Enter the name of the file to search
3. Click on the button Find
Note: You can also use additional search options by clicking on the link provided and specify where on your computer to search for the file, in which folders, etc.
A sufficiently flexible search system allows you to narrow your search so as not to waste extra time searching for files and folders.
You can also specify a file extension to find all files of that kind. Let's say you need to find all video files in order to display all video films and clips stored in different places on your computer in one list.
For such a task, we simply indicate, separated by commas, the main video formats that can be on our computer. For example, we write like this: * .avi, * .mpeg, * .mp4, * .mov * .flv, * .3gp, * .swf and perform a search. Or you can specify only some of these formats, for example: * .avi, * .mpeg, * .mp4, if we want to find films of such formats only.
The same can be done with any other groups of files: photos, text documents, archives, etc., by specifying the appropriate file extensions.
Find documents on your computer
This search is carried out according to the same principle as the previous one, so I will not add a picture, so it will be clear.
By the way, in addition to the above, here, as well as in all categories, you can search for documents by the date of last changes, by size and other criteria.
In addition to the search options described above, in the section search for files and folders, you can also select in additional parameters from the list of files provided, the format we need to search for:
You can find in which files the word we need is found.
For example, we remember that in some text document they wrote about dumplings. But where is this record - now they have already forgotten.
We also go to search for files and folders and perform 4 simple steps:
1.
To narrow down the search boundaries, we can indicate the extension of the document format in which we could write about dumplings. For example, it can be a text document .doc.
But, if we do not know how the format is indicated, you can leave this field empty, and in the field File type search for a suitable format for the file you are looking for.
Or you can choose nothing at all, just a search will be made in all documents. Of course, this can be much longer, but further we will also analyze how this process can be accelerated.
2.
We indicate the word that we want to find in the desired file. In our case, we write: dumplings
3.
And we point out: where to look for this word? If we remember on which disk the file is located, we indicate this disk. If we don’t know, we can specify the whole computer as shown in the picture.
4.
It remains to click on Find and wait until the file we need is found.
Note: You can even include part of the file name (leading characters) in your search criteria. And also you can use "masks" like: "*" and "?", As shown in the picture (* .doc).
Sign * (asterisk) tells the system that we don't care about the file name, and the system will search for all files with the suggested extension. For example, the indication * .doc will show the system to search for all files with the .doc extension, i.e. all documents of the Word editor.
Or an indication book * .xls will show that you need to search for all files with the extension .xls, i.e. all Excel editor documents whose name begins with symbols book.
And if you use a question mark and specify like this: ????. txt, then the system will search for all text files with the extension .txt, in which the file name consists of any four letters. For example, like this: window.txt
If you have to use the search for files on your computer often, you can speed up this process. To do this, you need to follow the link Set up an assistant, then select: Using an indexing service and Turn on this service:
After that, the computer will index all the files on the computer, "remember" where they are and when searching for files or folders will quickly display them in the search results.
So we have considered how to search for files on a computer in Windows XP.
By the way, in this article we looked at how to find files using the standard Windows search. If you have difficulty finding files with a standard tool, I recommend using a third-party tool that allows you to find files instantly!
Our computers store a huge amount of information in the form of movies, music and documents. Sometimes, having forgotten where this or that document is saved, it is rather difficult to find it. There are various ways to quickly find documents. Perhaps the easiest is to find a document by date. Let's figure out in more detail how to find documents by date in a computer.
It is very easy to do this:
- To do this, open the "My Computer" folder. In the left column, select the local drive where, in your opinion, the document is located. If you do not know which local drive you need, then it is better to stay in the "My Computer" folder.
- Using the left mouse button, you need to open the search window, which is located in the upper right corner of the explorer. In the window that opens, you need to find the inscription "Add search filter".
- After that, click on the change date and in the calendar that appears, select the specific date when the document was created and changed. If you do not remember the exact date, you can select a date range from the list provided. You can also specify your range by calendar - for this you need to select the first date and by holding the Shift key select the last date.
- As a result, the computer will display several documents that satisfy the search, among which you will find the required document.
In the same way, you can find a document by its size by selecting the appropriate search type in the same window. It's pretty simple.
Also, documents can be found not only by date, but also in other ways, by other parameters. To do this, you can use a simple function that any operating system has. To do this, you need to click the "Start" button, in the window that opens at the very bottom of the search field will appear. There you need to enter the name of the document and click on "Ok". In this case, it is not necessary to enter the name in full, you can enter only a word or several letters in a row in the name of the document.
If you do not remember at all what the document is called, then you can enter the following: * doc. Then start the search program. The computer will give you several documents, among which you will definitely find the document you need.
Also, if the required document was saved not so long ago, then you can use another search method. You need to press the "Start" button and go to recent documents. Then enter the document name and open your Word program. After that, at the very top, you will find the "File" section, you need to go there and select "Open". In the window that appears, you will need to choose a place to search, you can select recent documents. After that, the computer will display those documents that have been saved recently.
Thus, it is quite easy to find a document on a computer, you just need to know a few ways to do this.
Sometimes you need to see what files were recently created or changed - for example, because someone else installed an unnecessary program without asking, or you just need to find a document that was changed last week, and the name of the file and folder is completely forgotten. Windows has a handy search tool that lets you quickly get a list of all recently created or modified files.
About time stamps
Each file has one or more timestamps that the operating system uses to mark when the file was created, last modified, or opened. In Windows, this information is recorded for each individual file or folder.
- A 64-bit parameter representing the number of 100 nanosecond intervals since January 1, 1601 (UTC). Conversion from this system-wide format to a more human-readable format occurs when Windows accesses the file label. The system extracts from it information about the year, month, day, hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds. The NTFS file system stores time values in UTC format, so they are not affected by changes in the time zone, the transition from winter to daylight saving time and vice versa.
System time stamps, of course, are not immune to errors and changes, but they are very useful in a variety of situations, from calculating the date of a particular business transaction to collecting evidence as part of a police investigation.
Date Created Is the date and time the selected file was created. This value is written once and, as a rule, does not change - unless using third-party utilities.
Date Modified Is the date and time of the last rewriting of the file, that is, the last change to its content. Renaming a file does not affect the modification date, nor does opening a file without making any changes.
Date Accessed- this is the date (and on NTFS volumes also the time) of the last access to the file for reading or writing.
How to view timestamps in File Explorer
If you want to see the timestamps for all files, folders and subfolders in a specific directory, you can do this in File Explorer. By default, only the date and time of the change are shown. If you also want to know the date of creation and last access, you need to change the view settings.
Open Explorer and select the "Details" view. By default, the Name, Size, Type, and Modified Date columns are displayed. Right-click on any of them and select Created Date from the context menu.
Then select the "More" command, select the "Access date" item in the appeared list and click "OK". Now sort the columns in descending order to see all recently changed files.
How to find recently changed files by searching
You can use the "datemodified:" filter to find recently modified files. Open the folder in Explorer where you want to find the modified files, or the This PC section to search the entire system. In the search bar, enter "DateChanged:" (without quotes). A window will appear asking you to select a date or range.
For the most common search scenarios, there are presets for Today, Yesterday, This week, Last week, and so on. files, you can use one of these presets or enter in the search field "date modified: today" ("yesterday", "this week", "last week", etc., without quotes). Windows will start looking for suitable files and display them in search results.
By default, the system only shows the most recently modified files in indexed locations. To include folders that are not indexed in the results, click the Advanced options button on the Search Tools tab and select System files. It is not necessary to include system files in the search every time, but in some situations it can be useful.
Let's say you accidentally pressed the wrong button when installing the software and after a while you found out that extra shortcuts appeared on the desktop or some strange pop-up panel was added in the browser. You can easily find unnecessary files by looking at the list of recently created or modified files.
If you don't mind using the keyboard, you can simply type a specific query into the search bar. For example, to find all files changed from June 6 to June 7, 2015, you just need to enter "datemodified: dd / mm / yy..dd / mm / yy" (without quotes, in the English version - "datemodified: Mm / Dd / Yy ..Mm / Dd / Yy ", two periods between dates are required).
Saving search terms
After spending a lot of time writing the correct search terms, you don't want to mess with it again if you need to find the last modified files again. Fortunately, Windows allows you to save your search terms to a special file with the ".search-ms" extension.
To do this, on the Search tab, click the Save search button. Enter a suitable name for the file and save it. If you do not manually select the location of the file, a link to it will appear in the Favorites section of the Explorer navigation pane.
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When might you need to search for files? The number of files available on the hard disk (or hard drives) of a computer can reach tens of thousands. Most of them, most likely, are service files written to the hard disk during the installation of the operating system or various applications, but the number of working documents processed on a given computer can also be significant. Even if the user carefully monitors the ordering of the directory system, remembering where all the working documents are located is almost impossible. There are also cases when, in a hurry or through an oversight, the file is not written to the usual designated place, but somewhere else, and it is not known where exactly. The Windows XP operating system provides a means for finding files about which the user has only incomplete information. The search result is a complete list of files on the computer that meet the specified search criteria.
How do I start the file finder?
There are several ways to run ib file finder. The standard way is to use the Main Menu (Start »Find» Files and Folders). If there are no active windows on the Desktop, or if a folder window or Explorer is active, you can use the F3 key or the View »Browser Panels» Search command to launch the ^ fjg file search program.
What are the general search techniques?
In a regular search, you must first click on the Files and folders link. After that, you can set irreducible search parameters on the panel. To set additional parameters, you need to open the corresponding categories by clicking on the button with the "herringbone". After all the parameters have been specified, the search can be started by clicking on the Find button. Information will appear in the window next to the search bar
Found files. Data is always presented in the form of a table containing an additional column, Folder. The window fills up as the required files are found, but any of the icons can be used as soon as it appears, without waiting for the end of the search. To repeat< >To start the search procedure (possibly with different initial data), click the Start new search link.
How do I find files by name?
Most often, when searching, an IU is used: I of a file or its fragment (for example, a name extension). To search for n>; name, enter the file name or its fragment in the File name part field;] or the entire file name. In this case, you can use substitute characters: the "*" (asterisk) character replaces any number of arbitrary characters (including their absence), and the "?" (question mark) replaces exactly one arbitrary character. The Word or phrase in file field allows you to enter a word or phrase that should be contained in the file you are looking for. It should be noted that such a search makes sense only for unformatters>; these text files, as otherwise the formatting information of the document violates the integrity of the text and interferes with the search. The Search in field allows you to specify areas to search for the desired file - the folder within which the search will be performed. In particular, you can specify a specific drive where you want to find the desired file. To select a folder, open the list; for convenience of selection, the Browse item is included in it. After specifying the search parameters, click the Find button.
What is the peculiarity of searching for files with long names?
In previous versions of Windows, the search engine interpreted a series of words separated by spaces as alternative search terms, that is, it looked for files whose name contains at least one of the specified words. Windows XP requires all of the specified words to be included in the name of the file you are looking for. However, the space itself is not considered a significant character. To search for a file name with spaces in mind, you must enclose the specified sequence of characters in quotation marks.
How can I find files by creation date?
If you need to find files created or modified over a period of time (this is often the case when different people are working on the same computer on the same project), you should click on the herringbone button next to the question When were the last changes made? By default, the date the file was last modified is ignored. The search tool allows you to search for files that have changed in the last week, month, or year, and to specify a range of valid dates exactly. By default, the current date is entered in the From and To fields, so most often it is enough to change only the start date for the search.
How do I find files by size?
If you know the approximate size of the file you want to find, click the herringbone button next to the question What is the file size? On the panel that opens, you can roughly set an estimate of the file size using the radio buttons, or, by checking the Specify size radio button, set a more precise limit.
What additional search options are there?
More Search Options (More Options pane) lets you specify the file type using a drop-down list, although it's easier to do this by specifying a name extension. This panel also contains a set of checkboxes. They allow you to enable the search for files in system and hidden folders, to refuse the mode of viewing subfolders, which is enabled by default. You can also be case sensitive, although there is usually no CMI.K in this. ia.
How to find files by combining! "About signs?
The more information is known about the file you are looking for, the more accurate the search results will be. Indeed, if the list of found files is several hundred pieces, then the task of choosing a specific desired file is practically not facilitated. Psot: mu file search tool allows you to simultaneously specify for the search several criteria of different types on the panels. The search checks the compliance of files with all specified criteria at the same time.
How do I use search results?
The search results pane is similar in content to the main working area of the folder window. The main thing is: "ii The difference is that the table contains an additional column Folder. The user can sort the data by any of the columns using the column headings, the context menu or the View menu. Icons allow you to open any of the found files or use the context menu. Open , the folder containing this file can be>: using the command File> Open the folder containing the object.
How do I save my search terms?
If you have to repeat searches frequently with the same terms, you can save the search terms. For<:охранения параметров поиска следует дать команду Файл >Save search terms. In the dialog box that opens, you can select a folder and specify a file name. The search terms are saved in a file with the FND extension. To load conditions, double click on the corresponding icon.
I am unable to save my search terms. What can be wrong?
For unclear reasons (possibly.: UR; error in the operating system), saving the search conditions is possible only if no restrictions on the file name are specified during the search. The Part of the file name or the whole file name field must be< (ставлено пустым или в него может быть введена комбинация подстанопочных символов, соответствующая любому имени файла (например, *.*), То есть, сохранить можно только ограничения на дату файла и на его размер, что существенно снижает полезность этой функции.
How do I re-search?
When you change the parameters on one of the tabs of the search program window, everything that was set on the other tab remains unchanged. To avoid accidental inconsistencies and incorrect search conditions, a new window should be used for each search operation. For example, you can give Start> Find> Files and Folders every time. In this case, the search parameters will exactly return to their initial state.
The search engine in Windows 7 is organized slightly differently than in Windows XP, but it is no less convenient, and is performed at a much faster speed.
How to start a search
To start searching for files in Windows 7, you need to open Explorer and select the folder in which you want to search, or, if you do not know which directory the file is located in, select "My Computer". Then the search will be performed on all hard drives.
You need to search for files of any format using the search bar, which is located in the upper right corner of the Explorer in any of its windows. You must enter a keyword or phrase on this line.
The search is performed very quickly by analogy with the request processing mechanism in any search engine. As you enter a query word, the system immediately starts scanning files and producing results with titles containing the entered characters, words, or phrases.
How to use filters to search
At first glance, it may seem that such familiar filters available in XP, such as creation or modification date, file type, size and author, are not available when searching in Windows 7, but this is not at all the case.
When you enter a search query, a list of filters corresponding to the type of file you are looking for appears in the drop-down line below, the conditions of which can be set right there, in the search line. To do this, you need to click on the desired filter and set its value, for example, the change date "Last week".
How to find files of a specific type
To find a file whose format is known, for example, audio, video, photo, or document but its name, creation date, or other parameters are unknown, you can use the file type search by specifying its extension in the search terms.
Documentation . To search for documents in Word format, enter the characters "* .doc" (for the Word 2003 format) or "* .docx" (for the Word 2007-2010 format) in the search bar. An asterisk denotes any sequence of any characters.
For Excel files, use the symbols "* .xls" (for Excel 2003 format) or "* .xlsx" (for Excel 2007-2010 format).
For text files created using the Notepad application, you need to enter "* .txt" in the search box.
Video. To search for video files, enter the video file extension in the search bar. The most popular extensions: "* .avi", "*. Mp4", "* .mpeg", "* .wmv", "* .3gp", "* .mov", "* .flv", "*. Swf ". You can find out the file extension by right-clicking on it and selecting Properties from the context menu, where its extension will be indicated in the File Type line.
Audio. The most popular audio file format used on computers is MP3, and to search for them, you need to enter the characters "* .mp3" in the string.
Images and photographs. To search for pictures in the search bar, enter the most commonly used extensions of such files "* .jpg", "*. Jpeg", "* .png", "* .bmp", "* .tiff", "* .gif".
How to find a file in a large list of already found files
It often happens that the attributes of a file are unknown, or only one is known, and it is very uninformative. For example, we know that the document was created last year. However, over the past year, a huge number of documents have been created, stored in different places. It often does not seem realistic to view and check a huge number of files found based on one attribute.
To find the required file in the list of already found files, you can use several filters at the same time, setting and changing each of them in the search process as needed. Each time you add a new filter, the selection will be repeated already in the list of found files, reducing the processing time and the number of results, which greatly simplifies the search for the very desired file.
How to find a file by content
As a rule, Windows 7 searches for files by the content of the query in the file name, and not in the text that the file contains. To find the file with the desired word in its text, and not in the name, you need to make simple settings.
Let's say the task is to find among 500 files a document with the word "Shovel" in its content. To do this, on the control panel, click "Organize" and select in the drop-down menu, select the line "Search folder options".
It is worth noting that a search with this parameter will take a longer time, and when the need to search through content is no longer needed, this option should be disabled.
How to save your search terms
It often happens that files need to be searched frequently, the same search conditions are used for this, and there are several of these conditions. In order not to waste time on entering the same search parameters every time, the list of these conditions can be saved.
To do this, you need to set the search conditions, wait for the results to be displayed, and upon its completion, click on the "Save search conditions" control panel, and in the window that opens, enter the file name for the repeated query, for example, "JULY 2013".
Later, when the saved set of search conditions is needed again, the required shortcut can always be selected in Explorer and the Favorites folder under the saved name.
How to clear your search terms
By clicking on the cross at the end of the search line, you can clear the previously entered information and filter conditions that were used for the search, and the line will become empty.
Having tried search in Windows 7 several times, you can see in practice that it is practical, lightweight and fast. Now you know how to search for files in Windows 7.
