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| How To...Use The Find Feature |
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Operating System April 2000 • Vol.6 Issue 4 |
How To...Use The Find Feature | ||
 What You Need To Know Benefits Find misplaced files and manage groups of files Time One minute Skill Level Easy to Intermediate It's 4 p.m., and you just received a panicked call from your manager. She needs that contract file for the Jenkins account you worked on more than two months ago, and she needs it now. However, things have been so hectic since then you cannot remember the file name you used or even the subdirectory in which you placed the file. What are you going to do? Windows 98 and Windows NT offer a feature that can help you easily locate any file on your computer. No matter where you placed it, and even if you don't know the name of the file, the Find command can locate your missing file.  Begin The Hunt. To start your search, click the Start button. On the bottom section of the menu, in the area you cannot change, will be a Find menu. Clicking this will bring up a submenu. Click the first options, Files Or Folder, on that submenu. This opens the Find dialog box; use it to describe the file in as much detail as you remember. Windows then uses that information to show you a list of all the files that match those criteria. The logic is much the same as using an Internet search engine. The Find dialog box has three tabs: Name & Location, Date Modified, and Advanced. On the Name & Location tab, there is space to enter as much of the file name as you remember. In addition, the Find command supports the use of wildcards, which are characters that replace one or more characters in a file name. For example, you might enter *.doc for a Word file or *.exe for an executable program in the Named field. By default, Find looks at your entire hard drive, but you can enter another drive or a specific subdirectory to search. You can also use the Browse button to point to the location to search. In Win98, you have another option on the Name & Location tab. If you remember some of the text contained in the file, you can enter that into the Containing Text field to help with the search. In WinNT, this text box is on the Advanced tab. The Date Modified tab in both versions of Windows lets you narrow the search to specific dates for the last modification to the file. You can enter a start and end date for the search, or you can search over a specified number of days or months. The Advanced tab lets you specify in which program you created the file and the maximum and/or minimum size of the file. If you specify the program that created the file, this will significantly speed up the file search, and it will reduce false matches. Find Now. Once you have entered as much of the information as is applicable, click the Find Now button to perform the search. A list of files matching your search criteria appears in the bottom of the dialog box. By right-clicking a file in this list, you can view a pop-up menu for that file. Here, you can select to edit, copy, delete, or rename the file. In addition, you can perform other actions specific to your configuration. For example, WinZip will add an option to this menu to compress the selected file, and Eudora will add an option to e-mail the selected file. Performing Other Types Of Searches. When you click the Start button and select Find, Win98 and WinNT will give you three other options: Computer, People, and On The Internet. ( NOTE: Your Find menu may not contain all these options. The People and On The Internet features will appear [or not appear] depending on your e-mail program and browser. In addition, the appearance of these commands may vary.) Computer. Selecting the Computer command from the Find menu allows you to search for other computers on your network, either by the name of the computer or the name of a shared folder. However, it is usually easier to double-click the Network Neighborhood icon on the Desktop; it presents a list of all the computers on the network. People. Selecting People from the Find menu loads Internet Explorer and takes you to the Find People window. Here, fill in all the information you can about the person you are looking for. Then, in the Look In field, you can choose to search your Address Book, Yahoo! People Search, the WhoWhere Internet Directory Service, and many others. To begin your search, click the Find Now button. (Naturally, for some of these options to work, your computer must be connected to the Internet.) On The Internet. If you select On The Internet from the Find menu, Windows loads Internet Explorer and takes you to a search engine for searching the Web.  by Ronny Richardson |
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