XYplorer - Tour: Finding Files with XYplorer

Tour

Finding Files with XYplorer

Recently, many Windows users are frustrated with Vista/Win7's new search. Well, XYplorer's search works as you know it from XP: Enter a search term, press 'Find Now', and find what you are looking for! It's easy because you already know how to do it.

XY's search is a live search that doesn't need any index. If a file exists XY will find it.

Practical Example #1

You are looking for a file having "Muller" in the name, and you know it's somewhere in folder E:\Job\.
Here you go: Open the Info Panel (press F12), select the Find Files tab, and open Name & Location. Set the Name field to: Muller Set the Location field to: E:\Job\ Press the "Find Now" button (or F3). That's it. Within a few moments the files you are looking for are listed in a special tab called "Search Results" and ready for further processing. It's as simple as that!

Practical Example #2

Now let's add a little spice to the previous example. You are not sure anymore whether it was "Muller" or "Miller". So the Boolean operator OR is needed...
Here you go: Open the Info Panel (press F12), select the Find Files tab, and open Name & Location. Set the Name field to: Muller OR Miller Set the Mode dropdown to: Boolean Set the Location field to: E:\Job\ Press the "Find Now" button (or F3) That's it. Within a few moments the files you are looking for are listed in a special tab called "Search Results" and ready for further processing. It's as simple as that!
To illustrate the power of XYplorer's Boolean Search, here's a number of variations on the theme: If you want to confine the search to PNG files set the Name field to: (Muller OR Miller) AND .png If you want to confine the search to PNG and PSD files: (Muller OR Miller) AND (.png OR .psd) If you want to exclude files containing "Schmidt" from the previous example: (Muller OR Miller) AND (.png OR *.psd) AND NOT Schmidt

Practical Example #3

You are looking for a file having the word "Muller" somewhere in its contents, and you know it's somewhere in folder E:\Job\.
Here you go: Browse to E:\Job\ Press Ctrl+Shift+F (opens and resets Find Files tab) Open tab "Contents", and set the text field to: Muller Press the "Find Now" button (or F3) That's it. Within a few moments the files you are looking for are listed in a special tab called "Search Results" and ready for further processing. It's as simple as that!

Tip: Content searches take longer than mere name searches because all files have to be opened and read in completely to do the matching. So, if you know the file type of the files you are looking for, you should state it in the name field to speed up the search. You would, for example, set the Name field to *.doc; *.csv; *.txt to confine the search to DOC, CSV, and TXT files.

Note: In the above screenshots the Navigation Panel has been hidden to give all the screen space to the Search Results.

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