Very useful PC utility (free)

[DQE]

I recommend the "Everything" file name location utility for all versions of Windows, as follows:

Basically, after a simple installation and checkbox configuration, one types in a fragment of the file name you're looking for, and it *instantly* finds and lists all files with that name fragment somewhere in the file name. For example, to find all files with the keyword "hover", the keyword "2011" and the file extension ".cr2" (Canon's camera raw file extension), I would enter the following search string into Everything's input window:

hover 2011 .cr2

It would then instantly produce a fully detailed listing of all candidate files, and I would optionally refine the search keywords, sort the listing by date or size or name or folder name, etc, etc.

Since it only uses the "master file table" based list of file names that each PC hard drive or volume has, it doesn't need to actually search your hard drives. Even with my 8-hard-drive PC tower, it "searches" all 8 hard drives instantly, effectively working in real time as one types.

It does *not* search inside files for text strings, and of course works best if you name files with keywords in file names when appropriate. E.g., adding the word "hoverfly" to a file name would permit this utility to find all your files that included that keyword in their file name. Similarly, if you include the keywords "income tax 2011" in your 2011 income tax file names, you can quickly find them without creating well-organized folder names, etc. With modest effort, this utility mostly replaces file organization schemes with search and a much looser file foler organization scheme, slightly analogous to what Google does on a *vastly* larger scale.

A major advantage of this utility IMO is that it does not require indexing of the contents of hard drives, something that uses a lot of computer resources and hard drive space and that also has to be updated frequently, potentially shortening the life of one's hard drives. This utility instead uses a preexisting list of file names, which is built into the Windows Master File Table. I've turned off the built-in search and file indexing stuff that is built into Windows, eliminating this PC resource contention; I believe this has improved my PC's responsiveness - interrupting or competing with the normal/default file system indexing process is something I'm glad to be rid of. One may also wish to turn file indexing off within MS Office, for the same reasons. YMMV, especially if you do a lot of within-file searching for things like text strings. You can still do full text searching in Windows without indexing but it will take longer.

One of Everything's many useful features, helpful for various purposes, is to use one of Everything's right-click options to "copy file path to clipboard". This way, you can then paste the complete location name for a file of interest into other applications (e.g., Zerene, Photoshop, MS Word, etc), or into Windows File Explorer's address bar, etc.

I've not seen any bugs, crashes, or error conditions created by this utility, and it's never crashed or interfered with anything.

Here's a link to this (IMO) very useful and very efficient utility:

http://www.voidtools.com/

[genera]

This may be useful for older versions of Windows but Vista and 7 and probably XP have similar capabilities built in.

Your search: hover 2011 .cr2 should yield the same results in Vista or 7. You can specify 'not' search terms here too. For instance, if you have both hoverfly 2011 .cr2 and hovercraft 2011 .cr2 you could exclude the hovercraft files by including -craft in your search string.

As for only searching file names, in the Search Tools > Search Options dialog that is available once you start a search from Windows Explorer you can specify what to search;

file names only,
file names and previously indexed contents, or
file names and all contents including those not yet indexed

Once you select one of these options it remains active on subsequent searches until you change it.

Once you find the file of interest you can copy the full path by right clicking, selecting Properties, and copying the path from the "Location:" area.

Since Explorer search is so tightly integrated with Windows you can also do things such as print, preview, and change files attributues or security level.

I've said all this without ever using "Everything" so I can see how it may be useful in earlier versions of Windows and it may even have usefulness in later versions of Windows that isn't apparent to me yet.

[DQE]

Thanks for the Win7 info and tips.

I must confess that I have not tried to search for file names only in my Win7 64- bit PC.

I had (possibly mistakenly) assumed that it would need to index all my hard drives, with regular updates to the indexes, in order to do *any* sort of search (text or file names).

With so many HDs on my PC, I've been averse to indexing my HDs, especially if the indexes would necessarily include content just in case I wanted to search content instead of file names.

One could of course run Win7 searches without having indexes. Hopefully WIn7 would just use the Master File Table and not actually search the hard drives in some other way.

Maybe that's where I have accidentally acquired a disconnect - perhaps an unindexed Win7 search for file names only would work at least as well as the Everything utility I use frequently. I'll have to try that out. Part of the answer would also be how easy the user interface GUI menu is during my ordinary uses.

[DQE]

I just ran a quick test using the built-in Win7 64-bit search utility. I had it search for file names only, across all my hard drives. I used the search keywords: hover, .cr2

These keywords would only find my Canon raw files where I had inserted the "hover" or "hoverfly" keyword into the file name.

The MS search took quite a few tens of seconds with my unindexed hard drives

By comparison, the special-purpose Everything utility completed its search for the same keywords in semi-real-time, while I was typing the keywords into its search string window.

I'm surprised at how slow the Win7 file name search was, although waiting a few tens of seconds isn't the end of the world. I don't *think* I messed up the Win7 search test as it clearly did not search the content of the files. I also did not add any other search qualifiers such as "size" or "modified", etc.

I practically live with the Everything utility and don't much bother to keep stuff strictly organized into folders any more. It's just too easy and too fast to search instantly as long as I have usable file name fragments to help locate a file. I don't aim to find exactly one file as I just modify the search strings to narrow down the file name search if too many files pop up. Since Everything's search is effectively real-time, sloppy search techniques don't cause much of a time penalty.

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Now where did I put that text file I was composing for posting to the Photomacrography forum...I wonder what I would have named it? (insert friendly grins here)

[Chris S.]

Thanks, Phil. This does seem like a nifty utility.

Ironically, I didn't look at your post yesterday because I was too busy searching for some important missing files, muttering in frustration at the search functions of both Windows XP and windows 7.

I like "Everything's" intelligent use of boolean operators. And it is indeed very fast. Its approach to including or excluding various volumes is quick and clean.

Am I right in thinking that it doesn't permit creation or modification dates to be used for searching, or did I just miss it?

--Chris

[DQE]

Thanks, Phil. This does seem like a nifty utility.

Ironically, I didn't look at your post yesterday because I was too busy searching for some important missing files, muttering in frustration at the search functions of both Windows XP and windows 7.

I like "Everything's" intelligent use of boolean operators. And it is indeed very fast. Its approach to including or excluding various volumes is quick and clean.

Am I right in thinkin that it doesn't permit creation or modification dates to be used for searching, or did I just miss it?

--Chris

Glad you're finding it useful and efficient.

Re "created" or "modified" date sorting:

Right-click one of the columns it provides by default and select any additional columns you want o see by default, such as "modified" or "created" dates.

You can sort the found files by any of the columns the utility provides in its results window. Thus, click on the "modified" column and it will sort them by date modified. Sometimes I have to click twice for some reason.

Also, it's well worth going through each and every setup parameter, fine tuning the utility's default options, hard drives to be searched, etc, etc. These parameters are under "Tools/Options"

I've decided to have the thing load its Master File Table database upon booting so it will always be instantly ready to use. It doesn't seem to add much time to the boot time. This option is user-selectable in its config parameters. YMMV.

[Chris S.]

Re "created" or "modified" date sorting

Actually, it was searching, not sorting, that I was wondering about. For example, "show me all files generated on June 17, 2009."

I actually do keep things pretty well organized via folders, but if one accidentally drops something into the wrong folder, it can be quite hard to find. I'm no fan of the search capabilities built into any version of Windows, and the third party products I've tried have used more system overhead than I like. "Everything" seems to sip system resources very lightly. But if it can't do date searching, it's handicapped for my uses.

"Everything's" approach to letting the user include or exempt volumes is very quick and efficient. That's important to me because I have a lot of hard drives, many of which are partitioned into separate volumes, some of which I have no need to search.

[DQE]

Re "created" or "modified" date sorting

Actually, it was searching, not sorting, that I was wondering about. For example, "show me all files generated on June 17, 2009."

I actually do keep things pretty well organized via folders, but if one accidentally drops something into the wrong folder, it can be quite hard to find. I'm no fan of the search capabilities built into any version of Windows, and the third party products I've tried have used more system overhead than I like. "Everything" seems to sip system resources very lightly. But if it can't do date searching, it's handicapped for my uses.

"Everything's" approach to letting the user include or exempt volumes is very quick and efficient. That's important to me because I have a lot of hard drives, many of which are partitioned into separate volumes, some of which I have no need to search.

I agree that it would be better if one could type in a date or range of dates.

What I do to get around this is to find the candidate files regardless of date and then use the sort feature to find the files with a specific date or range of dates. It's so fast that this works better (for me) than one would think it might. YMMV of course.

I also often fine tune the search keywords iteratively, after seeing what happens with an initial set of keywords:

For example, if I were looking for hoverfly photos , with a .cr2 Canon raw file extension name, and couldn't remember the (for me) unusual species name, but believed I would recognize it if I saw it again, I would first do a search for "hover" , ".cr2". Then I'd look over the probably moderately long list of files, perhaps after sorting them by date. If I did recognize the species name I was trying to remember, I'd enter another keyword (the species name) and the list would instantly show only the files that contained the newly remembered species name. Then I'd probably be only looking at a handful of files, and would decide which date or dates the final candidates showed. I may then need to look at the actual photos in Photoshop to see which one(s) are really of interest.

Hope this helps. Since Everything works in real-time, even this inefficient search method works at high net effective speed, usually only taking a few seconds or at most a few tens of seconds total elapsed time.
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Perhaps my most common use of Everything is to find the proper folder for saving a PDF download into or for printing a web page into a PDF for future reference:

For example, suppose I found a hot new editorial on the European debt crisis and wanted to save it into my normal Euro Debt politics folder. I'd simply type the search string "Euro Debt" and it would instantly find a couple of candidate folders. I'd then right-click the correct folder, perhaps after examining its "last modified" date, and select "copy path to clipboard". Or, I might left-click a candidate folder in the Everything search results window, and Windows File Explorer would then pop up and show all the files in that folder for further investigation if needed. Or, maybe just seeing what is in the folder would be all I needed to be happy with saving to that folder.

Then, I'd paste the previously mouse-copied target folder name into the PDF utility's address window, hit the "return" key, and the PDF utility would then be ready to save the PDF into the correct folder. Same process would work with jpeg photos, downloaded from the web.

The great thing about this ad-hoc system is that I no longer have to remember all the folder names where I might store such things! Combining a half-way decent folder naming scheme with an instant file name search utility has proven to be unusually efficient for the way my mind works, and prevents me from having to manually root around all my hard drives to find just the right folder for a file save operation, and even then not being able to see all the candidate folders at a glance. Using Everything makes all this work very rapidly and without much mental stress.

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Google makes available (or used to) a desktop version of their search engine, called something like Google Desktop, but I have an aversion to letting them any further into my personal space. Also, I think it would require building and maintaining hard drive file and contents indexes, something I am opposed re my PC's hard drives. Just using the built-in Master File Table and limiting one's self as much as possible to only needing file name fragments seems so much more resource- and time-efficient for my personal needs and circumstances.

I do occsionally use the full text Win7 file contents search engine but I only need to search file contents a few times per year, so far.