Windows Search Tips & Tricks: How to Easily Master Windows Search

Usually we search files in Windows by just typing a few letters in the search box (on top right of any Windows Explorer window), but Windows offers advanced techniques which makes it million times more useful. For most Windows users such tricks remain ‘hidden’ until they try to find it somewhere.

Initially I tried alternative third-party utilities like UltraSearch, SnowBird, FileSearchEx, etc. But all they disappointed me and I uninstalled all of them because none of them seemed user-friendly and failed to give that Windows feel.

The fact is, no third-party software provides as much powerful, accurate and fast search as Windows itself. Here is the complete guide listing all Windows search tips and tricks to help you master it:

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notes or filename:notes or Name:notes

Simply find files having the word ‘notes’ as a whole word in the file name: Like notes, my notes, notes taken, etc.

ext:.exe

Files having extension ‘exe’

ext:<>.exe

Files not having extension ‘exe’

filename:~<“notes” or ~<“notes”

Files whose names begin with “notes”

“My Notes” or filename:=”My Notes” or =”My Notes”

Use quotes to find file matching exactly same name

filename:~!”notes” or ~!”notes”

Files whose name doesn’t contain “notes”

filename:~=”note” or ~=”note”

Files names whose names contain the word “note”, for example, mynotes, notes, _notes, notebook, etc. Alternatively you can also use *note*.

(jignesh rathod)

Use parentheses to find files that contain both words in any order. For example, Jignesh Rathod, Rathod Jignesh.

date:this week

Files created this week

date:01-01-2013..31-01-2013

Files created within provided dates

date:>15-01-2013

Files created after provided date

date:<15-01-2013

Files created before provided date

datemodified:25/12/2013 or Modified:25/12/2013

Files modified on given date. Can be used with keywords ..,< or < same as shown above.

kind:pictures

Find files of type pictures without caring about extensions

kind:video

Same way, find any types of videos

kind:music Rahman

Find music files by artist name

size:gigantic

Try it to know who’s eating so much space on your computer!

size:500MB..800MB

Files having size between 500 and 800 MB

size:5MB

Files with size greater than 5 MB.

mynotes folder:desktop

Files with given file name within specified special folder like desktop, documents.

mynotes folder:c:\program files

Files with given file name within specified folder path

contents:notes

Find the word within files, this may take longer time. Read our detailed article on how to find text within files.

author:Jignesh

Files whose author name is Jignesh

author:~!”Jignesh”

Files whose author name doesn’t contain ‘Jignesh’

keywords:morning or Tag:morning

Files tagged with the word ‘morning’.

Using Wildcards:
Use question mark (?) for specific number of characters and asterisk (*) for any number of characters.

note?

Find files starting with ‘note’ but having only 5 characters: For example notes or noted. Using note??? will give you files with ‘notice’ and ‘noting’.

*note*

Find files containing ‘note’ anywhere like notes, note-book, mynotes, _notes, noted, notepad, etc. Using note* will give you files beginning with ‘note’ and *note will give ending with ‘note’.

Using Operators:

great AND place

Find files which contain both the words ‘great’ and ‘place’ even if they are used in any order

great OR place

Find files having any word of provided.

great NOT place

Find files containing ‘great’ but will exclude which contain ‘place’

Tip: Use operators in upper case letters

Using Multiple Keywords together
You can also use above keywords together to get best of out Windows search. For example:

ext:(.jpg OR .png) AND Name:login AND Size:>5KB

This will give you all JPG and PNG files containing the word ‘login’ with size greater than 5KB

kind:pictures AND ext:<>.gif AND (filename:funny OR filename:*share*) AND (filename:~=”tech” AND filename:~=”computer”)

Find all pictures except .GIF animations, file name contains ‘funny’ or ‘share’ or ‘shared’, but file name does not contain words ‘tech’ and ‘computer’.

filename:draft AND author:jignesh AND (date:01-01-2013..31-01-2013 OR datemodified:01-01-2013..31-01-2013) AND size:500KB..4MB

Find files named ‘draft’ by author Jignesh created or modified during the year 2013, between size 500KB and 4MB

Tip: When you are using ‘OR’ keyword, double-check if you need to use brackets (parentheses) for correct search condition.

How to Clear Search History

There are two ways you can easily clear recently searched items in Windows.
1. Very simple method I recommend. Click on the search textbox at the top right and it will open a popup listing recently searched items. Highlight the item you want to remove and press ‘Delete’ key. Keep the key pressed to easily remove all items. Very easy, wasn’t it?
2. Some advanced trick. Open Windows Registry Editor using ‘regedit’ command. Go to following path: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\WordWheelQuery.
Right click on folder ‘WordWheelQuery’ and delete it. This will clear the search history.

Useful Features in Search Results

Do you know about any other Windows search trick we might have missed here? Please share!