Find

Use this dialog box to search for files or directories on your computer and on network drives.

Dialog Box Options

Named

Type the file or directory name in this box. Use file masks to specify a group of files or directories. Use the drop-down list to select previous search masks. Important: if you specify a mask without an asterisk (*), question mark (?), or period (.), you will find all files and directories whose names contain this mask (e.g. if you specify "dog", you will find "dogs.txt", "hotdog.jpg", etc.). You can prevent this by adding a period (.) to the end of the mask (e.g. if you specify "dog.", you will find only "dog").

Find Now

This button starts the search. Press Escape or click the Stop button to interrupt it. Click the right side of this button to open a context menu with other commands.

Look in

This box contains the directories in which you want to start the search. You can specify multiple starting directories by separating them with semicolons (;). Use the drop-down list to select previously used starting directories.

Add

Displays a context menu where you can choose from three commands. The Browse command lets you locate and add the desired directory to the Look in box. The Add Local Drives command inserts all local drives into the Look in box. The Add Local and Network Drives command inserts all local and network (mapped) drives into the Look in box.

Search subdirectories

Select this check box if you want to search all subdirectories of the directories listed in the Look in box.

Search file content

When checked and the Containing box is not empty, the file content will be searched.

Containing

Type the text that a file should contain. If you do not know a file's name, you may be able to find it by typing some of its contents. You can specify four additional options: HEX-mode, Case sensitive, Whole words, and Regular expression. Use the drop-down list to select previously used search strings.

HEX-mode

Hexadecimal mode is used to enter the pattern character by character as hexadecimal numbers. You can also enter normal text in hexadecimal mode, but it must be quoted using double quotes. For example, if you enter '01 02 "text" 00', the pattern contains 7 characters: 2+4+1.

Case sensitive

When selected, it searches for strings that match the Containing string exactly. Otherwise, it searches without regard to character case (lowercase and uppercase characters are treated as equal).

Whole words

When selected, the found string must be preceded and followed by a space, tab, punctuation character, or the start or end of a line. Otherwise, the search finds any matching string, whether it is a fragment of a larger string or not.

Regular expression

When checked, type a regular expression into the Containing box. Regular expressions are powerful; you can use them to find text with specified attributes. For example, you can search for text where the pattern begins at the beginning of a line, ends at the end of a line, starts with one prefix and ends with another suffix, matches one word from a set of words, or contains only characters from a particular character sequence (e.g. numbers).

Advanced

Opens the Advanced Options dialog box where you can specify advanced search criteria.

Found Items

Contains a list of found files and directories. Click the column headers to sort this list by name, size, path, or time. You can also use the sort commands on the View menu.

See Also

Finding Files and Directories