Run Windows File Explorer, click on This PC, and the search box near the upper right will indicate “Search This PC”. You can examine the list of excluded folders and remove any you want included in search by clicking on it and then on Remove excluded folder. Searching Windows settings.Ĭlick on Enhanced to add the rest of your computer’s hard disk, with the exception of excluded folders, to the search. Click on Windows Search settings when it appears. 1 Run the Settings app, and search for “search”. You can instruct Windows Search to search your entire computer by changing a setting. Those include your desktop and the Libraries (such as Documents, Music, and Pictures) shown in the left-hand pane of Windows File Explorer. Searching your entire computerīy default, Windows Search searches only a predefined set of locations. Information about the file is displayed at the right, including its location on the hard disk, along with links to open the file or the folder in which it’s contained. In my example above, the “Best match” is the file I was looking for. Once you stop typing and Windows “catches up”, you’ll see a list of results, as shown above. If you don’t see what you’re looking for right away, type more of the name. What you type will be displayed in a search box (which may or may not already have been present on the taskbar), and results will begin to appear. Searching for a file with Windows Search. Windows 10 makes this simple.Ĭlick on the Start button and just start typing the name of the file, or some portion thereof. The traditional way to locate a file in Windows is the Search item on the Start menu. There are a couple of ways, and there are a couple of “gotcha’s” as well, so let’s look at how to track down that file you’re looking for. How do I find a file I know is on my computer? It reflects many different people asking roughly the same question in different ways. As you might guess, that’s a composite question.

Xyplorer install ifilters