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Contents
Preliminaries
Explorer (not the web browser)
Wildcard Characters
No More Lost Files:
Knowing Where You Put Them in the First Place
Finding Files:
if you don't know where they are
A common source of frustration is files that "vanish"; they must be on the hard drive, but where? There are several ways to find lost files, but you need to know at least a little bit about the file(s) you are looking for. You must know one of three things:
- Its name, in full or in part
- Its extension, in full or in part
- The approximate date it was created or last modified
If you know any one of the above, you should be able to find the file you are looking for using a program (application) called Windows Explorer.
Explorer
How do you get to Explorer? There are several ways. If you double-click the My Computer icon, you will see something like this:
There are four drives: the 3 1/2" floppy (drive A:), two hard drives, C: and D: (called This Beast and Idios, respectively), and the CD-ROM (drive E:). Ignore the folder icons. To see the contents of a drive, double-click its icon.
This is only useful if you want to search manually through every drive and folder, because this version of Explorer does not give you the option to search for files. Try one of the other ways to start Explorer (below).
Click the Start button, then Programs, then Windows Explorer. Or, click once with the right mouse button on the My Computer icon; a menu should pop up:
Click on Explore. You will see something like this:
Shortcuts: You can also click Start > Find > Files or folders, or, right click the Start button, and choose Find.
However you choose to open Explorer, once you are in it, click on Tools, and select Find, then Files or Folders...(see below).
A dialogue box appears:
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If you know the file's name or part of it, or its extension:
The left tab (Name & Location), which is what you see above, is for when you know a file's name, or at least part of it. First, select the drive (using the "Look in:" box) where you think it might be ; be sure the box beside "Include subfolders" is checked. In the "Named:" box, type the name of the file, if you know it, in full. If you know the file name or extension only in part, you can search for it using wild card characters.
Wild card characters are the asterisk * and the question mark ?. The asterisk replaces any number of characters, the question mark replaces individual characters. You type your guess at the file name and/or extension in the "Named:" box. Here are some examples:
t*.*
This will make Explorer search the specified drive for any files starting with the letter "t", no matter how long its name is or what the extension is. This search would turn up a list of files, for example, called TABLE_1.MDB, TAXES.XLS, TEXTILES.DOC, etc.
Note: Windows does not distinguish between upper- and lower-case letters when searching for file names. Searching for "T*.*" would give exactly the same results.
t???.*
This will search for any files starting with "t" that have a name four characters long ("t" plus three unknown characters), and any extension. The results might turn up such files as TEST.TXT, TEST.DOC, TOUR.EXE, TEMP (a folder name), etc.
Note: Names of folders (directories) do not usually have extensions, but they can if you wish. You could, for example, create folders named REPORT.JAN, REPORT.FEB, etc.
jan*.x??
This search will find any files starting "jan", followed by anything else, having a three-character extension beginning with "x". The result might be files like JAN-REPORT.XLS, JANUARYSALES.XLT, etc.
The results of your search appear in a window which pops up below the dialogue box, as shown in the search for "t???.*", below:
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If you know the date the file was created or last modified:
The next (middle) tab is for searching by date:
This is fairly self-explanatory: you can search for a file created/modified between date A and date B, or for files created/modified during the last x number of days or months.
The right tab, Advanced, is just that: for advanced users, and probably not of much use to the novice. Play with it, by all means.
Back to TopFinding Files:
make it easier by knowing where you put them in the first place
Any time you create a file (or modify an existing file) with any program, you have to save it or it will be lost, or the changes you made will be lost. These days, 99% of all programs will warn you if you try to shut them down without saving what you have done.
When you tell the program to go ahead and save a new file, you have to give your file a name. Most people just click the "Save" button after typing a name, and this is the step in the file saving process that causes files to become "lost": the user failed to take note of where the file is being saved. All programs have a default location where files are saved. That location is usually your My Documents folder, but it might be somewhere else. For example, if you create a document with Notepad and save it without specifying where you want to save it, that file might end up in the same folder as Notepad, which is usually C:\WINDOWS, as in the example below:
At the top left, you see "Save in:", and "Windows" in the box. The larger space below displays the files and sub-folders in the Windows folder (called "Command", "Config", "Cookies", etc.) What you see is a little ambiguous, because there is no way to tell what drive the Windows folder is on. You can see that by clicking on the down arrow to the right of "Windows":
In the example above, you can see that the Windows folder is on drive C:, so the path to that file will be C:\WINDOWS\filename. When you save a file, take a look at where it is being saved, and change the location if you want. This will prevent you from "losing" files.
Many programs also offer a choice as to what type of file you want to save your file as: in the lower left you see "Save as type:"; but that is another topic.
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