How to find a file on a computer

All major operating systems running on computers can find files on the hard drive or other drives connected to the computer. Click one of the links below for help with finding files and apps on your computer or mobile device.

Windows 10

Microsoft Windows provides an easy-to-use search feature that helps you find any file on your computer, even if you don’t know its full name. Whether you need to find a document, spreadsheet, picture, or video, the Windows search feature helps you find it. Choose the version of Windows on your computer in the list below and follow the steps to search for a file. Search examples and tips are also available by clicking the search tips link below.

1. Press the Windows key , then type part or all the file name you want to find. See the search tips section for tips on searching for files.
2. In the search results, click the Documents, Music, Photos, or Videos section header to view a list of files that meet the search criteria.
3. Click the file name you want to open.

You can use the arrow keys to arrow up or down to the app, file, document, or setting you want to view and press Enter to open it.

Windows 8

1. Press the Windows key to access the Windows Start screen.
2. Start typing part of the file name you want to find. As you type results for your search are shown. See the search tips section for tips on searching for files.
3. Click the drop-down list above the Search text field and select the Files option.
4. The search results are shown below the Search text field. Scroll down through the list of search results to find the file you are looking for, then click the file name to open it.

Windows Vista and Windows 7

1. Click Start to open the Start menu.
2. In the Search text field at the bottom of the Start menu, type part or all the file name you want to find. See the search tips section for tips on searching for files.
3. In the search results, click the Documents or Files section header to view a list of files that meet the search criteria. You can also click the See more results link at the bottom of the search results to see a full list of files that meet the search criteria.
4. Double-click the file you want to open.

Windows XP

1. Click Start to open the Start menu.
2. In the Start menu, click the Search option.
3. In the Search Results window, in the Search Companion section, fill out all or part of the file name field. See the search tips section for tips on searching for files.
4. If the computer has more than one hard drive, or you want to search a USB flash drive or CD/DVD, click the Look indrop-down list and select the appropriate drive.
5. Click the Search button to execute the search.
6. Files meeting the search criteria are shown in the Search Results window. Double-click the file you want to open.

How to find a file using Windows Explorer

1. Open Windows Explorer.
2. In the left navigation pane, click Computer or This PC.
3. Near the top-right of Windows Explorer, click in the Search field and enter part or all the file name you want to find.

To find a file on a specific drive, click the drive under Computer or This PC in the left navigation pane. Then enter the file name you want to search for in the Search field.

iPad and iPhone

1. Go to the home screen.
2. Swipe from the left edge of the screen to the right edge of the screen.
3. Type the file into the search bar at the top of the screen.
4. Tap the Search button.

Android tablets and phones

1. Open the Settings menu.
2. Tap Storage.
3. Tap Files or File manager.
4. Navigate through the folders to find your desired file.

Search tips

Below are a few tips to help users find files on their computer.

Find all GIF picture files on the computer

Type *.gif In the search text field. The *.gif indicates any file that ends with a file extension of .gif. The .gif can be replaced with any file extension. Below are a few examples of the common extensions you may use.

• *.doc or *.docx = Microsoft Word documents
• *.xls or *.xlsx = Microsoft Excel documents
• *.jpg = Another image extension (JPEG pictures)
• *.htm and *.html = HTML web pages
• *.mp3 = MP3 music files
• *.mp4 = MPEG-4 movie files

See the file extension page for a complete listing of extensions.

Find any files that contain help in the name

Type *help*.* in the search text field. The *help* indicates any file containing the word «help» in the file name and the «.*» indicates that the file can end with any extension.

Additional information, examples, and help with wildcards, as seen in the above examples, is available on our wildcard page.

4 Ways To Find Large Files In Windows 10

Free up space quickly by deleting them

If you quickly want to free-up memory space on your Windows machine, the best way to do that is to find large files on your Windows 10 PC and get rid of them if they’re no longer useful. The question though is how do you go about searching for large files on your computer?

Windows provides you with multiple ways to find all the large files that are stored in your drives. Either you can use the built-in tools on your machine to look for these files or you can grab a third-party app that will do the task for you. Either way, you’ll find the files that occupy a significant portion of your memory space.

Once such files are found, it’s then up to you what you want to do with them. If deleting them permanently isn’t something you’d like to do straightaway, you can move them over to a cloud storage or to an external hard drive.

Also, be sure to check out our YouTube video from our sister site Online Tech Tips where we go through some of the options mentioned below in this article.

Find Large Files In Windows 10 Using File Explorer

File Explorer comes with a lot of hidden features to let you organize, sort, and find files on your computer. One of its abilities is to help you find files that are of specific size on your computer. Using this feature, you can locate those memory-hogging files and get them removed from your PC.

Before you do that, though, you’ll need to first enable the hidden files option. This is to ensure that Explorer looks for large hidden files as well in addition to searching for the normal files.

However, be cautious while dealing with the hidden files. Most of the time, these are system and app related files which, if you delete, will cause your apps to malfunction and even lead your entire system to crash. Before you delete anything, just make sure you know what it is and you’ll be fine.

Open the Start Menu and search for Show hidden and click on Show hidden files and folders.

When the dialog box opens, click on the View tab at the top. You’ll see various File Explorer options that you can modify.

Find the option that says Show hidden files, folders, and drives and put a checkmark in it. Then click on the OK button to save your changes.

Double-click on This PC on your desktop to launch File Explorer. When the utility launches, click on the search box given at the top-right corner.

A new menu item will be added to the top of your screen. Click on the newly added item that says Search to view further options.

Select the Size option and then select an appropriate option from the list. It’ll let you find large files available on your PC.

If what you consider as a large file isn’t available in the default menu, type in size:>1GB (replace 1GB with your size) in the search box and hit Enter. It’ll only look for the files that are larger than your specified size.

When the search results appear, right-click anywhere blank and select Sort by followed by Size and Descending. This’ll ensure the largest file is shown at the top of the results.

Search For Large Files In Windows 10 With Command Prompt

If you’re more of a geeky person, you can use the Command Prompt utility to retrieve a list of all the files larger than a specified size value. The files list can be exported to a text file for you to then actually find those files on your machine.

Press Windows + R, type in cmd, and hit Enter to launch the utility.

When it launches, type in the following command and hit Enter. It’ll find all the files that are larger than 1GB in size. You can modify the value in the command so it finds files that you think are large.

forfiles /S /M * /C “cmd /c if @fsize GEQ 1073741824 echo @path > largefiles.txt

Open the newly created largefiles.txt file and it’ll have a list of all the large files sitting on your computer.

Use Largest Files Finder To Find Large Files On Windows 10

File Explorer and Command Prompt aren’t the only tools to find large files on your Windows 10 computer. There are a few third-party apps as well that can help you find such files.

Largest Files Finder is one of those apps that helps you find the top 100 largest files on your computer. It claims to be only taking a minute to scan drives sized upto 200GB. Also, it doesn’t require any installation and works straight out of the box.

• Download and launch the app on your computer.
• Soon as it launches, it automatically starts searching for large files on your computer. When it’s done, you can review the results for yourself.

If you want to delete any files from the search results, you can do so with ease from within the app. Simply right-click on any of the files and select Delete.

Find Largest Files On Windows 10 With TreeSize Free

TreeSize Free has been around for quite a long time and it helps you find space hogging files on your Windows computers. It requires a small installation but then it works like a charm.

• Download, install, and launch the app on your computer. Make sure to run it with admin rights so it can search the folders that it can’t otherwise.
• You’ll see a tree of your folders along with the space they occupy on your screen. You can double-click on any folder to view its subfolders and their sizes.

You can then sort the directories by the Size column so that the largest files are always shown at the top.

It has a few customizable options as well should you want to use them. Feel free to play around with any options you think will make it easier to find large files on your computer.

Mahesh has been obsessed with technology since he got his first gadget a decade or so ago. Over the last few years, he’s written a number of tech articles on various online publications including but not limited to MakeTechEasier and Android AppStorm. Read Mahesh’s Full Bio

How to do a simple file search in cmd

I want to quickly search for a file given its name or part of its name, from the windows command line (not power shell). This is similar to opening explorer and using the search box at the top.

Note: dir can search based on a string template but it will not search in the subdirectories.

Note2: findstr can be used to search for a token inside files and has a recursivity flag; it’s funny that a more complex find can be easily discovered .

5 Answers 5

dir /s *foo* searches in current folder and sub folders.

It finds directories as well as files.

/s Lists every occurrence of the specified file name within the specified directory and all subdirectories.

searches for all txt file in the directory tree. Before using it just change the directory to root using

you can also export the list to a text file using

and search within using

EDIT 1: Although this dir command works since the old dos days but Win7 added something new called Where

will search for exe & dll in the drive c:\Windows as suggested by @SPottuit you can also copy the output to the clipboard with

just wait for the prompt to return and don’t copy anything until then.

EDIT 2: If you are searching recursively and the output is big you can always use more to enable paging, it will show — More — at the bottom and will scroll to the next page once you press SPACE or moves line by line on pressing ENTER