How to find a file in Windows XP? For example, we will search for a Word file. Often, while working in text editor Word, we create a lot of files and forget about them for a long time. But at one fine moment we suddenly need to find some document, but we don’t know where it is. There is neither time nor desire to search for such a file manually throughout the computer. And if we don’t even remember its name, then these searches are simply useless. We'll be wasting our time and energy. What to do in this case? This is what we will talk about now.
How to find a file in Windows XP
The most reasonable thing in such a situation is to use the system search. Every operating system has a search function, and it would be stupid not to use it.
Usually the default is all text files Word are saved in system folder « My Documents", but it's better to search your entire computer.
You can open any folder and search. I'll show you how to do this from the My Documents folder.
Open the folder " My Documents" Select the icon " Search».
If you do not have such an icon, then open the menu “ View» — « Browser Panels» — « Search».
In the box on the left where it says “ Part of the file name or the entire file name» write at least one word from the file name. If you don’t remember a single word, then don’t write anything.
Below where it says " Word or phrase in file» write some keyword from your lost document. In the window " Search in:"Indicate the folder in which you saved it or simply indicate " Disk C:" (the search will go through the entire hard drive).
For example, I indicated in the search the word “ animals" You can narrow your search by specifying the approximate date the file was created. And be sure to specify the file type " DocumentWord" Click on the button “ Find" Here's what we got:
We found all files that contain the word “inside or in the title.” animals" You can open them one by one and view them. When you find the file you need, grab it with the mouse and drag it (for example) to the Desktop. Or, look at what folder it is in (it’s written in the column Folder).
In the same way, you can search for any file. The main thing is to set the search parameters correctly. To do this, indicate in the field File type appropriate name. Try it. And you will succeed.
Video How to find a file in Windows XP.
If in Windows XP the file search was, although slow, still workable, then in Windows 7 it turned into something completely incomprehensible. Many people successfully use search in Far or Total Commander instead of the standard ones Windows tools. When there are a lot of files on disks, this search is also slow. I would hardly have believed if I had not tried it myself that files can be found instantly (!), right when entering the file name into the search bar. Interested?
A miracle program that saved me a lot of time and continues to help me every day is called Everything. This free mini-application (the portable version is 272 KB in size) does just one simple thing - it searches for files on disks based on part of the file name. The magic is that the search happens instantly as you type the letters of the file name into the search bar (like Google's "live search"). This opens up much greater possibilities for searching files. For example, if you forget the exact name of a file, you can quickly try different variations of the name. With a “classic” search, you would have to wait a long time each time for the search to complete, but here you can immediately see whether something was found or not: 
How it works?
When the program is first launched, it scans the file distribution table (NTFS MFT) and saves the scan result to a small cache file. Disk scanning is very fast - even with several terabytes of data, scanning will take no more than one minute. Based full list files on all disks Everything builds an in-memory data structure for quick search. During subsequent launches, repeated scanning of all disks will no longer occur: the program will take information from the cache file and only update it. To track file changes, the program uses information from the USN log of the NTFS partition.Program limitations:
- The program searches only for NTFS partitions.
- The search is performed only by file names (it is not possible to search by attributes, dates and contents of files).
I'm sure Everything will become your reliable assistant and save many, many hours. And for Microsoft, this is a reason to think about how search should actually work;)
The Windows XP operating system is one of the most popular and at the same time one of the longest-lived Windows systems. Although many computers are already equipped with newer Windows versions, XP still lives on second computers and laptops, where there are photos and which you have to look for there often.
Searching for photos in Windows XP can be done using the methods of the “Search” service available in this operating system. Although this service was not specifically created to search only photos, it can nevertheless be used very effectively for these purposes.
You can start searching for photos in Windows XP from any folder by clicking the “Search” button on the top panel of the Explorer window (Fig. 1), as well as from the “Start” menu in the lower left corner of the screen (Fig. 2).
Fig.1 Searching for photos in Windows XP is possible from any folder.
Fig.2 Searching for photos in Windows XP from the Start menu.
After clicking on the “Search” button on the top panel of Explorer on the left will appear special settings to search in Windows XP (Fig. 3). To quickly search photo files different types they must be specified correctly in the search settings.
Fig.3 Search settings in Windows XP.
Features of photo search in Windows XP
The first item in the search settings in Windows XP is “ Pictures, music or videos" Logically, it is suitable for searching photos, but not always. There is one feature in the Windows XP operating system that does not allow you to select this item to search for certain types of files digital photos.
The thing is that when installing an operating system on a computer Windows systems XP does not recognize some types of graphics files, including some photo file formats, such as PSD, and DNG. The operating system does not recognize such files as images and ignores them when searching for the query “ Image Search».
In order to find photo files of all types on your computer, you need to left-click on the item “ files and folders" (). After this, new settings will appear on how to search. In the upper window you need to specify file extensions, and in the lower window the place to search for them (Fig. 4).
Fig.4 Search options for photo files in Windows XP.
If you need to search for several types of files at once, they must be entered after a semicolon, for example .jpg, dng, psd. You can write without spaces, but there must be a period before them. Otherwise, the search will be performed on all file types that have combinations of these letters in their names, as well as where the letters form file extensions.
Setting up photo search in Windows XP
To search for photos in any of the rare formats such as DNG, you just need to specify the file resolution and the location to search for them. After which they will be accurately found by the search service of the Windows XP operating system ().
If, when searching, you need to find photographs in the format, you must also specify the size of such files in the settings. This is one of the filters Windows search XP, which helps to narrow the search range (Fig. 5).
Fig.5 Selecting file sizes for searching photos in Windows XP.
Besides photos JPEG format Computers often have many other image files of the same format stored on them. These are usually files different programs, which will also be found upon request .jpg.
The easiest way to exclude when searching for photos graphic files of images that are not photographs is their size. .jpg files in folders of different programs are usually small in size, since they are used for the official purposes of these programs and should not take up much space.
Digital photo files, on the other hand, are over a megabyte in size, which is necessary to preserve the quality of their image. More Exact size can be set in the search settings by specifying no less or no more any number in kilobytes ().
In order to search for photos in all subfolders, you need to check the box in the additional search settings the required line. In addition, you can also specify other search parameters there (Fig. 6).
Fig.6 Additional options for searching photos in Windows XP.
Sorting search results in Windows XP
After the search service in Windows XP finds all the files that were specified in the search settings, they will be displayed in the right window of Explorer. The left window will display information from the search results about the number of files found and your possible actions (Fig. 7).
Fig.7 Photo search results in Windows XP.
Now, to work with these files, you can sort them into different categories, such as: name, modification date, size, file type. In the left column of the Explorer window, you can specify one of these parameters in the corresponding search results line (Fig. 8).
In addition, in the right window of the Explorer window, you can also sort files by clicking on the name of the desired column. If you want even more categories to sort, you need to click on the row with the column names right click mouse and select the desired categories (Fig. 8,9).
Fig.9 Selecting additional categories for sorting.
Sorting the found files is necessary in order to clearly see possible areas for searching for photos. For example, sorting by date modified or created will show the dates of all available photos in ascending or descending order (if you click on the column header).
After sorting the found files into one of the categories in which you need to search for photos, all that remains is to narrow down their search. Go to the left window of Explorer and click the “Back” button. Add to search settings new parameter and repeat the refined search. Thus, the search area can be narrowed several times (Fig. 10).
Fig.10 Additional setup dates of last changes.
For example, you found all photos with extensions .jpg, dng, psd, tiff and sorted them by date modified. Now, in order to select all photos from the found files, for a certain period you need to add this period in the search settings and repeat the search. After this, from the found files you can select, for example, files of the same name or the same size. There are many options for narrowing your search. Choose yours.
Viewing search results in Windows XP
After searching specified files photos, you can quickly view their thumbnails here in the search results window. To do this, select the line “ Display search results differently", and then the item " Sketches" (). Or the same thing if you select the folder view icon on the top panel of Explorer ().
In order to quickly go to the folder of the found photo, you need to right-click on the file in the search results window and in the window that opens context menu select the top line " Open the folder containing the object"(Fig. 11).
Fig. 11 Go to the folder with the found photo.
If you delete a file from the search results window, it will be deleted from the folder where it is stored. The search service in Windows XP can quickly find, for example, all duplicate photos and immediately delete them. This is very convenient if photo files are stored in different folders.
If any of the found files were mistakenly deleted or moved from the search window, the Windows XP search service allows you to quickly return them to their place. To do this, you just need to press the key combination “Ctrl + Z”. Each subsequent press cancels the previous action.
About searching for a photo on a computer, about searching in others operating systems You can read about programs for searching photos on your computer in the following chapters:
Sometimes it happens that we need to find some file on the computer, many users are looking for it and do not know that this process can be made much easier.
Windows XP has an assistant that will help you find almost any file on your computer.
How to call the search assistant in Windows XP?
In order to call the assistant, you can use the start menu - select “Search” in it, after which the search window will open. In order to search, for example, in a folder, you should open this folder and click in it F3, it's very convenient, try it.
Now let's look at some search options.
Search for images, music or videos
At this point we can choose what exactly we want to search for - so as not to manually set the file extension through a mask. In field Part of the name or the entire file name we enter the name of a file or folder, we can also enter it by mask.
Search documents (text files, spreadsheets, etc.)
At this point we can set a search for documents by time, text files will be taken into account Microsoft Excel, Word (i.e. Excel, Word). To make your search easier, you can use the criterion Last modified date.
Search options in Windows XP
Search options are provided in each search option and serve to make your search more accurate and faster, and you can use them if necessary.
Part of the file name or the entire file name. Search by mask
We directly write the file name in this field; it is not necessary to indicate the permission. If we do not know the full name of the file, then we can write only part of it, and replace those characters that we do not know with asterisks (search by mask). For example, we want to find a picture under the name:
TommyJerry_02.jpeg
If we want all files that contain TommyJerry, then we write:
*TommyJerry*
If we want only images to be displayed, then:
*TommyJerry*.jp*g(jp*g since the extension can be either jpeg or jpg)
Additional search options
Here, I personally always check all the boxes except “Case Sensitive”, since in this case the search also occurs in hidden folders, if, for example, you are not the only one working at the computer, then this can improve the results.
You can also select another file size or last changes, but that's more fine tuning search, I do not use these search criteria. If you have a lot of files on your computer, then to speed up the search you should pay attention to these settings.
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