If I’m cleaning out my hard drive to free up space, I’ll start with Search to find the biggest files to delete first. If I want to put all my pictures in one folder, I can search the entire drive for files that have the extension. The Search function is also a great way to organize your files. From there you will be able to search various criteria. If nothing shows up in the search results, click search anywhere to bring up the Advanced Search menu. Indexing makes searching the contents of a file nearly instantaneous. With indexing turned on, you can also try typing a specific word that might only be in that document.
In Windows Vista/7: Click Start and then in the Start Search field, type what you think the document name is. In Windows XP: Click Start, Search, Select All Files and Folders, and then choose search criteria. You would only do this if you have absolutely no idea what the file name is or if it was mixed in with a bunch of the same file type.
In extreme cases you can also search the contents of every file to match up with what you are looking for. Even if you don’t remember the name, you can probably still find the file by searching by the date you may have last modified it, by a portion of the file name, by the size of the file, or even the document extension of the file. This method will help you most quickly if you know the name of the file you are looking for. If none of the easier methods have worked, you can always use the Search function that is built into Windows. I usually try and save these files to my Desktop or to the Documents folder. This option can usually be found within the Options or Preferences menu items.Ĭreating a fake file is particularly helpful for applications that save files to their own obscure default location. With most applications you can change the default location where the files are being saved. This can be quite frustrating if your folder is in an uncommon location on your hard drive. You can also right-click on file to bring up a menu of actions – re-save the file somewhere else, move it, email it, etc…Īpplications usually remember the last location you saved a file, but often times that last location isn’t necessarily where you save every single file. That should give you a pretty good hint where the file is located. Create a new file in Excel and go to Save As you should see the directory where the files are being saved by default. Let’s say you know you created the file in Excel, but just don’t know where you saved it. If you weren’t able to find your file with the two methods above, then creating a fake file with the application could work. If you never have had to specify a new location to save a file, your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files are probably here. Microsoft Office applications usually save to those folders by default. Check Your My Documents or Documents Folders
Typically only the 5-15 most recently used files are listed in applications.ģ.
With Word 2007, you want to click on the circular “Office” button to display your most recently used files. Looking for a file that you last used in Microsoft Word? Open Word and click File to see a list of recently used files. Check the Recently Used List in Your Applications There, you will find the last 15 files that you have opened/saved on your computer.Ģ. In Windows Vista/7, this is named Recent Items.Ĭlick on the Windows Start Button and scroll up the menu to either Recent Documents or Recent Items. In Windows XP, this is named Recent Documents. We’ll start with the simplest methods and work our way to the more complicated. If any of these scenarios are familiar to you, then this tech tip should be helpful. Have you ever copied a document to your hard drive, but couldn’t remember where you saved it? Have you created a new file with a program and can’t figure out where to go when you want to attach it to an email? How about downloading a file from the web with your browser and then not knowing where to go to open it?