Definitive Syntax for Windows Explorer Search

Ever wondered what the * means in *.txt? Well see below. I finally bothered to look it up so that I could find all *GM*.dll files on my computer and delete them!

Asterisk (*)
Use the asterisk as a substitute for zero or more characters. If you are looking for a file that you know starts with “gloss” but you cannot remember the rest of the file name, type the following:
gloss*
This locates all files of any file type that begin with “gloss” including Glossary.txt, Glossary.doc, and Glossy.doc. To narrow the search to a specific type of file, type:
gloss*.doc
This locates all files that begin with “gloss” but have the file name extension .doc, such as Glossary.doc and Glossy.doc.

Question mark (?)
Use the question mark as a substitute for a single character in a name. For example, if you type gloss?.doc, you will locate the file Glossy.doc or Gloss1.doc but not Glossary.doc.

Courtesy of this MSDN page.

My Search Queries

  1. windows search syntax
  2. windows + “search companion” + syntax
  3. windows explorer search syntax

Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) on Oct 20th, 2006 and is filed under GoldMine, win32.

Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg

Comments are closed.