Is there a smarter Find files utility for Windows 8 than Windows key + F?

Question

Is there any utility for Windows 8 that will basically do the same thing the old "Find" dialog in Explorer did?

Often times (many times a day) I need to find a particular file, and I don't know the name of it or where it is, but I can remember a phrase in it, and approximately when it was written, e.g., it has the phrase "Duckbilled Platypus" in it and was written sometime in the last week.

The Find Files functionality in Windows 8 is lame by comparison; I know there are probably geeky ways to jump through hoops and do it, but I don't want to have to write GREP expressions, I want something easy like the old functionality...

score 7 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 27 '12 at 22:55

7

Open the Start Screen
Type in indexing options
Select Advanced ⇨ File Types
Select Index Properties and File Contents instead of the default of Index Properties

edited Nov 27 '12 at 22:55

Synetech

69,547

answered Nov 27 '12 at 22:32

Snailbarf

71

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 29 '12 at 14:32

5

AstroGrep is extremely powerful and allows the use of regular expressions, but can do simple keyword searching as well:

answered Nov 29 '12 at 14:32

Karan

57,289

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 27 '12 at 00:25

1

If you launch the Windows 8 start menu and start typing it should search files on your system with you having to know the name or where it is. I believe this also searches applications that have search providers.

answered Nov 27 '12 at 00:25

Natalie Adams

2,157

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 28 '12 at 02:26

While Google doesn't promote it anymore, you can still find download for Google Desktop. Just, ahem, google it. :-)

I used to use it quite a bit. It's excellent for searching by contents across all your data: files, email, internet, etc.

Kinda sad they don't support it anymore.

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 20 '15 at 18:11

1

You could try also:

Just my 2 cents, hope it could help.

answered Jun 20 '15 at 18:11

danicotra

2,036

score -3 · Answer 6 · edited Nov 28 '12 at 01:34

-3

If you press the Windows+ F, just typing the word you are searching for will work.

It is the same as pressing Start and starting to type in Windows 7.

edited Nov 28 '12 at 01:34

avirk

15,877

answered Nov 28 '12 at 00:18

rosi

1

Is there a smarter Find files utility for Windows 8 than Windows key + F?

6 Answers6

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