Trying to search for .txt file

themanfrombehin said:

Hi folks,

Windows 10 64 bit sys

I am in dire need of everyones help please!

A couple years back I created a .txt file on my pc, now trouble is that I forgot the name of the file and I forgot where I put it.

Im just after some ways I can try search my entire PC effectively instead of sitting through file explorer.

If there is any tool out there or any methods to look for only .txt files, sort them by date and try find the file I would appreciate it so much.

Thanks in advance.

Best,

Themanfrombehin

Welcome to Ten Forums themanfrombehin.

As previously mentioned by hdmi, Everything Search by Void Tools is very fast and my 'go to' search utility.

Search for *.txt and adjust the columns to make the dates visible. Click at the top of the date column to sort as ascending or descending dates.

You do not need any third-party tools for this search.

Open File explorer,
Select ThisPC,
In the search box in the upper-right area type *.txt
click on the green box [with the white arrow] to start the search,
put the results into date order using the File explorer, View menu, Sort by - Date modified,
then when the search results appear you can optionally click in the View menu, layout section, Details to get a decent view for looking through.

- There is nothing wrong with doing it from ThisPC but it will take some time and will produce many irrelevant results.

- If you knew for certain that the file was on a specific disk or within a specific folder [or somewhere within its subfolders] then you could select that disk / folder as your starting point instead of ThisPC.

So, for example,if I knew the file was somewhere within my own Documents folders I could navigate in File explorer to
C:\Users\%UserName%\Documents
and use the search box there instead of ThisPC. This would be quicker and would produce fewer irrelevant results.

- [added later] As playto2fish mentioned in post #3, if you are certain that there is some unique or at least little-used word such as elephant in the file then, instead of searching on *.txt, you could type this into the search box

content: elephant *.txt

Denis

Denis, he may not need a 3rd party app but Everything Search is much better for this than File Explorer. It is much, much faster and one of the few 3rd party tools I always install.

You can install it or use the portable version. Installed is better as it's faster.

This is File explorer after 2 minutes, and search if not done yet.



This is Everything Search after about a second.



Very quick and the interface is more usable.

Ztruker said:

Denis, he may not need a 3rd party app but Everything Search is much better for this than File Explorer. It is much, much faster and one of the few 3rd party tools I always install.

You can install it or use the portable version. Installed is better as it's faster.

This is File explorer after 2 minutes, and search if not done yet.



This is Everything Search after about a second.



Very quick and the interface is more usable.

Nothing wrong with a good third party app.

Some choices Everything has: