Fix problems in Windows Search

If Windows Search is unresponsive or the search results don’t appear as expected, try any of the following solutions in this article.

If you’re running Windows 10 May 2019 Update (version 1903) or later versions and Windows can detect a problem, we’ll run the Search troubleshooter automatically. This troubleshooter will reset Windows Search back to the default experience. View your troubleshooter history under Settings > Update & Security > Troubleshoot > View History. Follow the steps below if your issue is still not resolved.

Original product version: В Windows 10 — all editions
Original KB number: В 4520146

Check for updates

Windows 10 lets you choose when and how to get the latest updates to keep your device running smoothly and securely. To manage your options and see any available updates, select the Start button, and then go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Check for updates. Install any available updates, and then restart your computer if the updates require it.

For more information, see Update Windows 10.

Run the Search and Indexing troubleshooter

Your PC automatically indexes content to deliver faster search results. Learn more about Search indexing in Windows 10.

Use the Windows Search and Indexing troubleshooter to try to fix any problems that may arise. To use the troubleshooter, follow these steps:

1. Select Start, then select Settings.
2. In Windows Settings, select Update & Security >Troubleshoot. Under Find and fix other problems, select Search and Indexing.
3. Run the troubleshooter, and select any problems that apply. Windows will try to detect and solve them.

You can also use a command prompt to open the troubleshooter. Press Windows logo key+R, enter cmd in the Open box, and then select OK. At the command prompt, run the following command:

Restart Windows Search or your device

End the SearchUI process to restart Windows Search by following these steps:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and select Task Manager.
2. In the Task Manager window, select the Details tab.
3. In the Name column, right-click SearchUI.exe, and then select End task.
4. When you’re prompted to end SearchUI.exe, select End process.

The Windows Search process will automatically restart the next time that you search.

If this solution doesn’t fix your problem, try restarting your device. Restarting will also install any pending updates.

You may want to bookmark this page before you restart.

Reset Windows Search

Try resetting Windows Search by using the method that’s appropriate for your version of Windows.

To determine which version of Windows your device is running, follow these steps:

Select Start > Settings > System > About.

Under Windows specifications, check which version of Windows your device is running.

Resetting Windows Search does not affect your files. However, it may temporarily affect the relevance of search results.

Windows 10, version 1809 and earlier

If the Windows 10 October 2018 Update or an earlier update is installed, reset Cortana to reset Windows Search by following these steps:

1. Select Start, right-click Cortana, select More, and then select App settings.
2. In the Cortana settings, select Reset.

Windows 10, version 1903 and later

If the Windows 10 May 2019 Update or a later update is installed, use Windows PowerShell to reset Windows Search by following these steps:

You must have administrator permissions to run this script.

Download the ResetWindowsSearchBox.ps1 script from the Reset Windows Search PowerShell script, and save the file to a local folder.

Right-click the file that you saved, and select Run with PowerShell.

If you’re asked the following question, select Yes.

Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device?

The PowerShell script resets the Windows Search feature. When the word Done appears, close the PowerShell window.

If you receive the following error message:

Cannot be loaded because running scripts is disabled on this system

enter the following command on the command line of the PowerShell window, and then press Enter:

The current policy appears in the window. For example, you might see Restricted. We recommend that you note this value because you’ll have to use it later.

Enter the following command on the command line of the PowerShell window, and then press Enter:

You’ll receive a warning message that explains the security risks of an execution policy change. Press Y, and then press Enter to accept the change.

To learn more about PowerShell execution policies, see About Execution Policies.

After the policy change is completed, close the window, and then repeat steps 2-4. However, when the Done message appears this time, DON’T close the PowerShell window. Instead, press any key to continue.

Revert to your previous PowerShell execution policy setting. Enter the following command on the command line of the PowerShell window, press the Spacebar, enter the policy value that you noted in step 5, and then press Enter:

For example, if the policy that you noted in step 5 was Restricted, the command would resemble the following one:

You’ll receive a warning message that explains the security risks of an execution policy change. Press Y, and then press Enter to accept the change and revert to your previous policy setting.

Close the PowerShell window.

If your organization has disabled the ability to run scripts, contact your administrator for help.

Help us improve Search in Windows 10

If the previous suggestions don’t fix the problem, let us know by sending feedback in the Feedback Hub. Provide details, such as a description of the problem, screenshots, log files, and any other information that might be helpful. In the Feedback Hub, select the appropriate category and subcategory. In this case, submit your feedback in the Cortana and Search category.

Local file search windows

SearchMyFiles is portable, and you can use it from a USB flash drive without leaving traces in the Registry of the scanned computer.

System Requirements

Versions History

• Version 3.10:
  • Added ‘Enter Key Action’ option (Under the Options menu), which allows you to choose what to do when you press the Enter key: No Action, Open Properties Window, Open Selected File, Open With. Open Folder, Select File In Explorer.
  • Added ‘Double-Click Action’ option, which which allows you to choose what to do when you double-click a file — No Action, Open Properties Window, Open Selected File, Open With. Open Folder, Select File In Explorer. This option replaces the previous ‘Open File On Double-Click’ option.
• Version 3.07:
  • Fixed issue: When the ‘Search Options’ window was opened, multiple fields were selected (with blue color).
• Version 3.06:
  • Fixed bug from 3.05: The ‘Time Range (Local Time)’ option failed to work properly.
• Version 3.05:
  • Added option to specify time range in GMT.
• Version 3.01:
  • Added «Don’t Save Search Options Window». If you turn on this option, SearchMyFiles will not save the settings of ‘Search Options’ in the .cfg file and the next time you run SearchMyFiles — this window will be loaded with the default settings.
• Version 3.00:
  • Added new option: ‘Use Windows search handlers to find text inside Microsoft Office documents and other file types’.
  • When this option is turned on, you can also search text in pdf files as long as the PDF search handler of Microsoft (Windows.Data.pdf.dll) or PDF iFilter of Adobe is installed properly on your system.
  • When choosing the ‘Find Folders’ option, SearchMyFiles now displays only the folders that match the specified wildcard in the ‘Files Wildcard’ field.
• Version 2.92:
  • Fixed the file size filter to work properly in bytes unit with size larger than 2 GB.
  • Added SearchMyFiles icon to the Explorer context menu.
• Version 2.91:
  • Added ‘Duplicate Mark Color Set’ (under the Options menu). You can choose ‘Color Set 2’ to mark the duplicate files with darker colors.
• Version 2.90:
  • Added ‘Include Only Folders’ field. You can use it if you want to only include specific folders in the search.
  • Wildcards are allowed here. You can specify multiple folders (comma-delimited list).
  • For example, if the base folder is c:\Shared and you want to search only subfolders with the name ‘Images’, you can specify the following wildcard in the ‘Include Only Folders’ field: c:\Shared\*\Images
• Version 2.85:
  • Added ‘Compare Mode’ for the ‘Duplicate Names Search’ option. You can choose to compare full name (the default) or to compare the name without the extension.
• Version 2.83:
  • Fixed issue: If you specify a search string in quotes that contain space characters (e.g: «Hello «) SearchMyFiles won’t trim the space characters like it did in the previous versions.
• Version 2.82:
  • You can now specify in the ‘Excluded Folders’ field a folder name without path.
• Version 2.81:
  • Fixed to find files without extension when specifying ‘*.’ wildcard.
  • Fixed bug: when specifying subfolder wildcard other than ‘*’, SearchMyFiles scanned all subfolders ignoring the subfolders depth settings.
• Version 2.80:
  • Added ‘Time Range And Date Range Separately’ option. For example. You can search all files that their modified date is between 01/01/2015 — 01/01/2017 and their modified time is between 08:00 — 10:00.
  • Fixed bug: SearchMyFiles created a csv file without header when using /SaveDirect command-line option with ‘Add Header Line To CSV/Tab-Delimited File’ option turned on.
• Version 2.78:
  • Added ‘Entry Modified Time’ column (Available only on Windows Vista or later with NTFS file system). SearchMyFiles retrieves this value only when ‘Retrieve Entry Modified Time’ option is turned on.
• Version 2.77:
  • When SearchMyFiles fails to delete a file it now displays the Windows error code and error description.
• Version 2.76:
  • Fixed SearchMyFiles to find UTF-8 string in a file.
• Version 2.75:
  • Fixed bug: SearchMyFiles failed to find text in a file if the text was located in certain positions inside the file.
• Version 2.74:
  • Fixed bug: When specifying the same folder to scan twice in Duplicate Search mode, SearchMyFiles displayed all files inside this folder as duplicate of themselves.
• Version 2.73:
  • Fixed issue: When specifying multiple wildcards, SearchMyFiles displayed a file multiple times if it was found by more than one wildcard.
• Version 2.72:
  • Added secondary sorting support: You can now get a secondary sorting, by holding down the shift key while clicking the column header. Be aware that you only have to hold down the shift key when clicking the second/third/fourth column. To sort the first column you should not hold down the Shift key.
  • Added new information to ‘Attributes’ column: ‘T’ for ‘Temporary File’, ‘I’ for ‘Not Content Indexed’, ‘X’ for ‘No Scrub File’, and ‘V’ for ‘Integrity Attribute’.
• Version 2.71:
  • Fixed bug: When using ‘Duplicate Names Search’ SearchMyFiles displayed only duplicate names of files that have the same size.
• Version 2.70:
  • The ‘Duplicate Names Search’ mode now has 4 sub-modes:
    • Show all duplicate names (Files and Folders)
    • Show all duplicate names — only files, no folders
    • Show only duplicate names with identical content
    • Show only duplicate names with non-identical content
  • Fixed bug: SearchMyFiles displayed an error message when searching in a volume shadow copy (e.g: \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy1 )
• Version 2.68:
  • You can now use wildcard in the ‘Excluded Folders’ field.
• Version 2.67:
  • The base folder and current search mode are now displayed in the window title.
• Version 2.66:
  • Added ‘Wasted Space’ column to the summary mode. This column shows the total wasted space on the specified folder, according to the cluster size of your disk. For example: if you have a file containing 1000 bytes and the cluster size is 4096 bytes, then the wasted space will be 4096 — 1000 = 3096 bytes. For files/folders that are not compressed, the ‘Wasted Space’ value will be the difference between the ‘Size On Disk’ and ‘Total Files Size’ values.
  • When you double-click on item in summary mode, SearchMyFiles now opens the properties window.
• Version 2.65:
  • Added ‘Duplicate Names Search’ mode, which allows you to find all files that have the same name, on different folders.
• Version 2.62:
  • When using the ‘Open With. ‘ option (F7), the ‘Always use the selected program to open this kind of file’ check-box is now turned off and disabled.
• Version 2.61:
  • Fixed bug: The Explorer context menu inside SearchMyFiles was empty on Windows 8 and Windows 10.
• Version 2.60:
  • Added ‘Auto Size Columns On Search End’ option.
  • Explorer context menu inside SearchMyFiles: When you right-click on a single item while holding down the shift key, SearchMyFiles now displays the context menu of Windows Explorer, instead of the SearchMyFiles context menu.
  • SearchMyFiles now displays a warning if you try to delete all copies of file in Duplicate Search mode.
• Version 2.56:
  • Fixed issue: When the search result contained a large amount of items, some actions, like selecting items and copying selected items to the clipboard were very slow.
• Version 2.55:
  • Added ‘Duplicate Search Options’ menu (Under the Options menu) with the following options: ‘Show All Files’ and ‘Show Only Duplicate Files’.
  • SearchMyFiles now checks the base folders list, and if one or more folders cannot be found, it displays a warning message.
  • Added ‘Run As Administrator’ option (Ctrl+F11), which allows you to easily run SearchMyFiles as administrator on Windows Vista/7/8/2008, in order to scan folders that are not accessable to non-admin user.
• Version 2.52:
  • Fixed bug: SearchMyFiles failed to remember the last size/position of the main window and the search options window if they were not located in the primary monitor.
• Version 2.51:
  • Added ‘Size on Disk’ column to the standard search mode.
• Version 2.50:
  • Added ‘Hide Empty Summary Folders’ option. When it’s turned on, all folders with 0 files are hidden in summary mode.
• Version 2.48:
  • Fixed bug from v2.46: SearchMyFiles stopped working on Windows 2000.
• Version 2.47:
  • Added support for searching text inside a file using wildcard, for example: Nir?oft, NirSoft*Utilities.
• Version 2.46:
  • Fixed SearchMyFiles to handle daylight saving time properly, like Explorer on Windows 7.
• Version 2.45:
  • Added ‘Clear Recent Files List’ option to the ‘Recent Config Files’ menu.
  • You can now specify the search options from command-line using single-quote characters (instead of double-quotes). When single-quotes are used, you can specify double-quotes inside the search option value, for example:
    SearchMyFiles.exe /BaseFolder ‘»c:\temp\folder1″, «c:\temp\folder2″‘
  • Increased the width of the drop-down list for some fields in the ‘Search Options’ window.
  • Added ‘File Size Unit’ option to change the size unit (Bytes, KB, MB, GB, or Automatic) on non-summary mode.
  • Added ‘Automatic’ to the ‘Summary File Size Unit’ option.
• Version 2.40:
  • SearchMyFiles now uses an internal wildcard parser instead of basing the search result on the wildcard parser of Windows. This change solves an annoying bug caused by Windows wildcard parser: In previous versions, SearchMyFiles sometimes returned incorrect results, because Windows also matches the wildcard with the short filename (8.3 DOS format).
  • Notice: The new wildcard parser may cause some compatibility issues, for example: When you scanned using *.* wildcard with Windows parser, it returned all files, including files without extension. With the new SearchMyFiles wildcard parser, *.* returns only files with extension. In order to return all files, you should use * instead of *.*
  • When loading old config files, SearchMyFiles automatically converts all *.* wildcards to *
  • The new wildcard parser has some advantages, for example: if you search for *.*.*.*, you’ll get all files with 3 dot characters or more. With Windows wildcard parser in previous versions, you simply got the list of all files.
  • You can now exclude files by using wildcards list. You have to select this option from the combo-box, because the default option is to exclude files by extension.
  • You can now specify environment strings in the ‘Base Folders’ and ‘Excluded Folders’ fields (For example: %AppData% )
• Version 2.35:
  • Added ‘File Owner’ column, which displays the owner of the found files, if the ‘Retrieve File Owner’ option is turned on.
• Version 2.30:
  • When choosing the ‘Delete Selected Files’ option, SearchMyFiles now shows a warning with red icon and the default answer is No, in order to prevent files deletion by mistake.
  • Added ‘Auto Size Columns+Headers’ option, which allows you to automatically resize the columns according to the row values and column headers.
  • Fixed issue: The properties and the other windows opened in the wrong monitor, on multi-monitors system.
• Version 2.26:
  • Fixed bug: SearchMyFiles displayed incorrect size/dates information for filename beginning with dot character (In duplicates search mode).
  • Fixed bug: SearchMyFiles missed the last non-duplicate file in non-duplicates search mode.
• Version 2.25:
  • Added ‘Recent Config Files’ menu, which allows you to easily open the last 10 configuration files that you used.
• Version 2.20:
  • Added support for finding text inside .xlsx files.
• Version 2.15:
  • Added support for finding text inside .docx and .docm files.
• Version 2.10:
  • Added /SaveDirect command line option, for using with the other save command-line options (/scomma, /stab, /sxml, and so on. )
    When you use the SaveDirect mode, the details of found files are saved directly to the disk, without loading them into the memory first. This means that you can save a list with large amount of files into your disk without any memory problem, as long as you have enough disk space to store the saved file. The drawback of this mode: You cannot sort the files list according to the name or any other column. The details of files are simply saved in the order that SearchMyFiles found them.
  • SearchMyFiles now allows you to use the save command-line options (/scomma, /stab, /sxml, and so on. ) in summary mode.
• Version 2.06:
  • Fixed the Explorer context menu to work properly with folder names containing comma character. (You have to remove the context menu and then add it again in order to update the context menu with this fix)
• Version 2.05:
  • Added ‘Close Options Window On Search Start’ option. If it’s turned on, the Search Options window is closed when you press the ‘Start Search’ button.
• Version 2.00:
  • Added ‘Summary Mode’ which displays a general summary of all scanned folders, instead of files list. For every folder, the following summary information is displayed: Total size of all files, total size on disk, total files count, and number of hidden/read-only/system/compressed files. You can watch the summary information for the specified folder only or for the specified folder and all its subfolders.
  • Added ‘Summary File Size Unit’ and ‘Include Subfolders in Summary Totals’ options (under the Options menu), for using with the new Summary Mode.
• Version 1.82:
  • The ‘Open Selected File’ option now allows you to open multiple files. (The number of files that you can open at once is limited to 20, because opening many files at once may hang your entire system)
• Version 1.81:
  • Added ‘Short Filename’ column, which displays the classic 8.3 filename of every long filename.
• Version 1.80:
  • Drag & Drop support: You can now drag one or more files from SearchMyFiles into a folder of Windows Explorer or any other software that supports Drag & Drop of files.
• Version 1.76:
  • Added ‘Duplicate Group’ column for duplicate search mode. You can use this column to easily delete duplicate files found by the duplicate search mode: Simply click the ‘Duplicate Group’ header to sort the files list by duplicate groups, and then you can leave the first group (group number 1) and delete the other groups (2 and above).
• Version 1.75:
  • On multiple values search — added option to choose ‘Or’ (Find one of the values) or ‘And’ (Find all values).
• Version 1.72:
  • The size and position of the ‘Search Options’ window are now saved in the .cfg file and loaded in the next time that you run the SearchMyFiles utility.
• Version 1.71:
  • Added /ExplorerCopy command-line option, which allows you to automatically copy the search result into the clipboard in Windows Explorer format, and then paste the found files into another folder in Windows Explorer.
  • Added x64 version, for making proper search under system32 directory of Windows. (On the 32-bit version of SearchMyFiles, the search is redirected to WOW64 folder).
• Version 1.70:
  • Added ‘Scan NTFS symbolic links/junction points’ option.
  • The date/time values are now saved/loaded in the .cfg file.
  • Added command-line options to set date/time range to scan: /FileTimeAccessed1, /FileTimeAccessed2 , /FileTimeModified1, /FileTimeModified2, /FileTimeCreated1, /FileTimeCreated2
• Version 1.66:
  • Fixed bug: SearchMyFiles failed to find any file when ‘File Contains’ option is set to none and you previously set SearchMyFiles to search only in alternate streams.
• Version 1.65:
  • Added option to search text inside alternate streams of NTFS file system. This feature can be useful if your want to locate a file by its summary information, like Title, Subject, Author, Keywords, and so on. because this information is stored inside alternate stream.
• Version 1.62:
  • Fixed bug: SearchMyFiles failed to load properly the configuration with ‘Load From Config File’ option.
• Version 1.61:
  • Added «File Doesn’t Contain. » option, which allows you to find all files that doesn’t contain the specified text/data.
• Version 1.60:
  • Added new search mode — ‘Non-Duplicates Search’ which allows you to find all files in the specified folders that are not duplicated.
• Version 1.56:
  • Added option to search multiple text/binary values, delimited by comma (in ‘File Contains. ‘ option)
• Version 1.55:
  • Added ‘Minimize/Restore Both Windows At Once’ option. When this option is turned on, minimizing/restoring the main window also automatically minimizes/restores the ‘Search Options’ window.
• Version 1.53:
  • Added ‘Add Header Line To CSV/Tab-Delimited File’ option. When this option is turned on, the column names are added as the first line when you export to csv or tab-delimited file.
• Version 1.52:
  • Fixed bug: When running SearchMyFiles with /BaseFolder command-line option or by using the Explorer context menu, SearchMyFiles sometimes started with the wrong folder.
• Version 1.51:
  • Added ‘Explorer Context Menu’ option. When it’s turned on, ‘SearchMyFiles’ menu item is added to the context menu of any folder in Windows Explorer. Choosing this menu item opens SearchMyFiles with selected folder as the base folder of the search.
• Version 1.50:
  • Added ‘Exclude Extensions’ option, which allows you to exclude one or more extensions from the search result. For example, if you specify ‘exe dll ocx’ in this field, exe/dll/ocx files won’t be displayed in the search result.
  • When saving the search result to html, the files are now displayed as links that open the specified file.
• Version 1.48:
  • Fixed issue: Removed the wrong encoding from the xml string, which caused problems to some xml viewers.
• Version 1.47:
  • You can now send the search result to stdout by specifying an empty filename («») in the command-line. (For example: SearchMyFiles.exe /stab «» >> c:\temp\search.txt)
  • Fixed bug: SearchMyFiles continued to search infinitely if the subfolder wildcard was empty.
• Version 1.46:
  • Fixed bug: pressing the Delete key in the ‘Search Options’ or in the find window activated the ‘Move To Recycle Bin’ option in the main window.
• Version 1.45:
  • The ‘Search Options’ window is now a Modeless dialog-box, which means that it won’t be closed when you start the search and you can leave it open during the search and after the search is finished.
  • Added ‘Set Focus On Search Start’ and ‘Set Focus On Search End’ options to determine whether the focus is moved to the main window when the search is started and finished.
• Version 1.40:
  • Added /StartSearch command-line option, which allows you to start a search without displaying the Search Options window.
  • The ‘Browse’ button of ‘Base Folders’ and ‘Excluded Folders’ in the ‘Search Options’ window now allows you to add more than one folder, when one or more folders are already listed in the text-box.
  • Added ‘File Position’ and ‘File Content’ columns for file content search. When the ‘File Contains’ field is not ‘None’ (text or binary), the ‘File Position’ column displays the position (in bytes) that the data was found, and the ‘File Content’ column displays the characters around the found text/binary data.
• Version 1.37:
  • Fixed bug: On duplicate search, SearchMyFiles displayed zero size files.
• Version 1.36:
  • Fixed the location of ‘Read Only’ and ‘System’ labels, which was mistakenly changed in v1.35 release.
• Version 1.35:
  • New search mode: Duplicate Search — allows you to easily find duplicate files on your system. (See below)
  • Changed the delete accelerator key to Shift+Delete, like Explorer.
• Version 1.30:
  • Added ‘Reset To Default’ button that allows you to easily reset the ‘Search Options’ dialog-box.
  • Added ‘Open File On Double-Click’ option. When this option is checked, double-clicking a file will open it with the default program, like double-click in Explorer.
  • Added new actions that you can make on the selected files of the search result: Explorer Cut, Delete, Move To Recycle Bin, and Rename.
  • In the search option of file times, added ‘Today’ and ‘Since Last Reboot’.
  • Added most-recently-used (MRU) list in combo-boxes of the search dialog-box. SearchMyFiles automatically remembers the last 10 strings that you used for every field, and allows you to easily select them from the Combo-Box. If you don’t want that your last search strings will be saved in the .cfg file (from privacy reasons), you can select the «Don’t Save MRU Lists» option in the Options menu.
  • Fixed the ‘Subfolders Wildcard’ issue according to users request. Just for example: In previous version, if you tried to search in c:\ with abc*.* as subfolders wildcard, and you had a folder in c:\hello\bbbbb\abc123, SearchMyFiles utility didn’t search in this folder even when abc123 folder matched the folder name, and that’s because the folder below, bbbbb, wasn’t match the subfolders wildcard. Starting from this version, SearchMyFiles scan all subfolders, even if they don’t match the wildcard, but the actual file search is only made for subfolders that match the subfolders wildcard.
• Version 1.20:
  • Added /sort command-line option for sorting the search result you save from command-line.
• Version 1.16:
  • Added ‘Copy Full Filenames Path’ — Allows you to copy the list of selected filenames as a full path filenames list, delimited by enter (CRLF).
• Version 1.15:
  • Added command-line support.
  • Added ‘Select File In Explorer’ option.
• Version 1.10:
  • Fixed bug: Base folder combo-box limited the number of characters that you could type.
  • Added option to save/load all search option to .cfg file.
  • Added ‘Explorer Copy’ option — Allows you to copy the selected files and then paste them inside a folder of Windows Explorer.
  • Added ‘Open With’ option.
  • Added option to choose the subfolders depth to scan.
• Version 1.00 — First release.

Future Versions

Using SearchMyFiles

After the search is finished, you can select one or more files, and then save the list into text/csv/html/xml file by using the ‘Save Selected Items’ option. You can also select a single file and open it with the default program by using the ‘Open Selected File’ option.

Search Options

Searching inside OneDrive folder

Getting MD5/SHA hashes of the found files

Duplicate Search Mode

When you are in ‘Duplicates Search’ mode, SearchMyFiles will first scan all files and folders according to your settings, and only after the scan is finished, it’ll locate the duplicate files and add them to the files list on the main window. SearchMyFiles automatically mark the duplicate files with identical colors (up to 64 different colors). There is also a ‘Duplicate Number’ column, which displays identical number for each chunk of duplicate files. You can click the ‘Duplicate Number’ column header in order to sort by this column and to easily view the chunks of duplicate files.

Be aware that the duplicate search is done by making a binary comparison of the files with the same size, byte by byte.

Non-Duplicates Search Mode

Duplicate Names Search Mode

Summary Mode

Command-Line Options

You can use the following command-line option in order to execute a search without displaying any user interface and save the result into a file. Be aware that when you do that, the only way to stop the search is by termintaing the process of SearchMyFiles (SearchMyFiles.exe).

/config	Loads the configuration from the specified .cfg file. Can be used in conjunction with the save options, like /stext, /scomma and so on.
/StartSearch	Tells SearchMyFiles utility to start the search immediately, without displaying the ‘Search Options’ dialog-box, according to the last configuration or according to the config file specified in /config parameter.
/ExplorerCopy	Search files without user interface according to the configuration file, and then copy the found files list to the clipboard in Windows Explorer format (Like ‘Explorer Copy’ option)
/SaveDirect	Save the files list in SaveDirect mode. For using with the other save command-line options ( /scomma, /stab, /sxml, and so on. ) When you use the SaveDirect mode, the details of found files are saved directly to the disk, without loading them into the memory first. This means that you can save a list with large amount of files into your disk without any memory problem, as long as you have enough disk space to store the saved file. The drawback of this mode: You cannot sort the files list according to the name or any other column. The details of files are simply saved in the order that SearchMyFiles found them.
/stext	Search and save the result into a regular text file.
/stab	Search and save the result into a tab-delimited text file.
/scomma	Search and save the result into a comma-delimited text file (csv).
/stabular	Search and save the result into a tabular text file.
/shtml	Search and save the result into HTML file (Horizontal).
/sverhtml	Search and save the result into HTML file (Vertical).
/sxml	Search and save the result to XML file.
/sort	This command-line option can be used with other save options for sorting by the desired column. If you don’t specify this option, the list is sorted according to the last sort that you made from the user interface. The parameter can specify the column index (0 for the first column, 1 for the second column, and so on) or the name of the column, like «Filename» and «Created Time». You can specify the ‘

‘ prefix character (e.g: «

Created Time») if you want to sort in descending order. You can put multiple /sort in the command-line if you want to sort by multiple columns.

Examples:
SearchMyFiles.exe /shtml «f:\temp\1.html» /sort 2 /sort

1
SearchMyFiles.exe /shtml «f:\temp\1.html» /sort «

Extension» /sort «Filename»

/nosort When you specify this command-line option, the list will be saved without any sorting.

You can also use the following command-line option to override the configuration loaded from the .cfg file: