Windows 10 is a great operating system that offers many features that are helpful in finding and locating files and folders. One of the most important features of Windows 10 is the File Explorer. File Explorer is a tool that allows you to find and access files and folders quickly. You can use File Explorer to find files in your local hard drive, in your computer’s storage, or on an online server. File Explorer also offers a variety of features that are helpful in finding and accessing files. For example, you can use File Explorer to view files and folders hierarchically, or you can use the Find command to search for specific files or folders. You can also use the View tab to change how Files Explorer displays files and folders. If you want to find a file quickly, you can use the Search command to search for specific words or phrases in Files Explorer. You can also use the CTRL+F keys to search for all occurrences of a word or phrase in Files Explorer.

Using Everything

Everything is a search engine for your Windows PC.  It will index your local and external NTFS drives for instant searching capability and shows every file and folder on your system.  You can run it locally on your hard drive or get the portable version to run from a flash drive which is great for working between machines.  Once starting up Everything it takes little time to index all your files into a searchable database, around at a rate of about of one minute per one million files.

 

While installing make sure to choose the different components you want to be installed such as adding it to the context menu or running during startup. You will also need to make sure you have Administrative privileges for low level read access to volumes.

Just type in the file you’re looking for in the search box and results are displayed as you type them.

Like with other search utilities you can use wildcards and can easily sort results by Name, Size, Date Modified etc.  When you click on a file in the results window it will open with its associated application and folders will open up in Windows Explorer. 

 

While you’re looking at the results list you can jump to others by clicking the first few characters of the file name.

Another neat feature is the ability to use boolean operators in your searches.  For example using vertical bar or pipe key “|” to represent “and” or use “!” to exclude something from the search so if you wanted to search for document.doc and document.docx as in this example.

While the search feature in Windows 7 is an improvement over previous versions it’s not as good as it could be.  Everything is the best Windows search utility I have ever used and will surely continue.  It says it will work with NTFS drives but I was able to search flash drives formatted as Fat32 as well.  It works with Windows 2000 up through Windows 7 32 & 64-bit.  This utility is a real gem and should be considered a must have in your computing toolbox.

 

Download Everything and Language Packs

Read the Everything Wiki for More Tips and Tricks