10 Ways to Search Files in Your System

Alternative to 'Search For Files And Folders' module of Windows.

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SearchMyFiles is an alternative to the standard "Search For Files And Folders" module of Windows. It allows you to easily search files in your system by wildcard, by last modified/created/last accessed time, by file attributes, by file content (text or binary search), and by the file size. SearchMyFiles allows you to make a very accurate search that cannot be done with Windows search.

1. Search files by Base Folder:

Specifies the folder that you want to scan. if 'Scan Subfolders' option is also checked, all subfolders under this folder will also be scanned. You can also specift multiple folders, delimited by semicolon. For example: c:\temp;d:\myfolder;d:\nirsoft

2. Search files by Excluded Folders:

Allows you to specify one or more folders (delimited by semicolon) that you want to exclude from the scan. For example: If you want to scan you entire C: drive, but without C:\Windows and C:\Documents and Settings, you should type 'C:\' in the Base Folder, and 'C:\Windows;C:\Documents and Settings' in the Excluded Folders field.

3. Files Wildcard:

Specifies the wildcard for scanning the files. You can specify multiple wildcards delimited by semicolon or by comma, for example: *.exe; *.dll; *.ocx or *.exe, *.dll,*.ocx. Be aware that if you want to search a filename containing semicolon or comma, you must put it in quotes. For example: "Hello, World.txt". If you don't put it in quotes, SearchMyFiles will consider it as 2 separated files.

4. Search files by Subfolders Wildcard:

Specifies the wildcard for scanning the subfolders. For example, If you want to only scan the subfolders beginning with 'a' letter, you can specify a*.* in this field.

5. Search files by File Contains:

Allows you to search by the content of the files. You can make a text search or binary search. On binary search, you should specify the binary sequence that you want to search in Hex dump format, for example: 'A2 C5 2F 8A 9E AC'.

6. Search files by File Size:

Specifies that you want to search files in specified size range (For example: search all files with size between 238 and 741 bytes).

7. Search files by Attributes:

Specifies that you want to search files with specific attributes. For example: if you want to find all files that are read-only but are not hidden, you should select 'Yes' for Read Only attribute and 'No' for Hidden attribute.

8. Search files by File Time:

Allows you to search files that have been created, modified, or accessed in the specified time range. You can specify an accurate time range (For example: 10/12/2008 12:32:11 - 12/12/2008 13:32:56) or you can specify the last number of seconds/minutes/hours/days. For example, you can search all files that have been modified in the last 10 minutes.

9. Search files by Search Subfolders:

If this option is checked, SearchMyFiles will scan all subfolders under the specified base folders.

10. Search files by Find Folders:

If this option is checked, SearchMyFiles will search for folders according to the other search options. If this options is not selected, SearchMyFiles will only search for files.