MetaPro Systems Inc.

Using the Windows Find/Search Feature

The Microsoft Windows Find feature is a powerful tool. The menus are slightly different among the various flavors of Windows. Under Windows 2000/ME, the feature is called Search and the menu choices are different, but the tool’s options have not changed. This article will explain how to use this feature in the 95/98 versions; the NT version is slightly different. To access the tool, click on Start and choose Find and then Files or Folders. You will then see three different folder tabs in the menu bar. Each tab enables you to refine your search criteria.

Name & Location tab

The first dialogue box in this tab is labeled Named. In this box you may enter the name of the file(s) you want to find. Wild cards, identified by asterisk(s) are allowed. For example, enter "*.*" to find all files, "*.doc" to find all Word documents, "harry.*" to find all files named "harry" regardless of extension, "h*.d*" for all files starting with "h" and an extension starting with "d".

The second box is Containing Text. The enables you to limit the search to files containing a particular string of text.

The last box, Look In, is where you point the search. You can search one specific drive or all local drives. You can also search a network drive if it is attached as a local drive. Click the Browse button to search a particular folder. The default is to search all subfolders within the selected folder. If you do not want the search to include the subfolders, uncheck the Include subfolders check box.

Date Modified tab

Using this tab you can limit the search by date by identifying a date range or a certain number of prior days or months. This feature gives you the option of searching by the dates the file was modified, created or last accessed. Note that to limit the search to today, you must use the date range option. Checking the previous 1 day will search today and yesterday.

Advanced tab

You can use the Advanced tab to further refine your search if necessary. In the Of type box you can limit the search to a particular file type. Using the Size is box you can limit the search to files of a particular size. You can choose from at least or at most.

Sorted Order

When the list of files matching your criteria is generated, you can sort by Name, Folder, Size, Typeor date modified. Click once on the appropriate header to sort in descending order. Click again to reverse direction. In our next issue, we will provide some examples on how to use this feature.

This article gives you some practical uses of Windows Find feature. Under Windows 2000/ME, the feature is called Search. You can learn more about the mechanics of this feature by reading the article addressing this topic in our previous newsletter. The article can also be found on our web site at www.metaprosystems.com/article020202.htm. In both articles we use Windows 95/98 terminologies.

Finding a Missing File

Suppose you want to retrieve a document that you wrote on your computer. You do not remember what you called it or where you stored it, but you remember that you created it within the past two months. The first step is to try to remember a word that you used in the document. Exclude commonly used words. In this example, you wrote an article about a new product your company is offering called the SV5000. You can search for SV5000. Under Named enter “*.doc”. Under Containing Text enter “SV5000”. Under Look In choose “C:” or all local drives. Under Date, choose the last two months. Press the Find Now key to find the files that match your criteria. A list of files will appear. You may immediately recognize the file you want. If not, click on each file in the list until you find the one you want. If there are too many files found, try a different word.

Deleting Obsolete Files

You are running low on disk space. For most applications, the standard is to create temporary files with the extension “tmp”. However, not all applications are good about deleting these on completion. Here is a way to remove all these files at once using the Find Now function. Under Named enter “*.tmp”. Under Look in choose the disk you are looking to clean up. After you find the files, you can select them all by choose Edit— Select All. Press the Delete key to move them all to the recycle bin.

You can recover a lot of space quickly by finding the biggest files that are obsolete. Enter “*.*” under Named. Under Size is, enter At Least and a high number, for example “1000 Kb”. After your Find Now is complete, click twice on the Size is column to show the biggest files first. Select any files that you know are obsolete. Press the Delete key to move them all to the recycle bin.

You need to Empty Recycle Bin, for the files to be gone from your system for good. To do this double click on the Recycle Bin icon, go to File—Empty Recycle Bin. Before deleting files, always be sure they are not needed and that your system is properly backed up.