What is the syntax of Windows 7 file search (wildcards, logical signs...) ?__

Anonymous
2009-11-16T14:40:26+00:00

Hello,

I am looking for it everywhere but I can't find it.

When in Windows search and you are looking for a file, you can type in *.txt to look for a '.txt' file.

But it seems that the syntax of file name to look seems more complex that it looks first.

For instance, the quote character (") and the equal sign (=) seem to have there own significance.

And I think I have heard that it was possible to use 'not' and 'and ' signs.

Please, where can I find the complete syntax of the search paterns?

Thank you a lot

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-02-14T23:18:18+00:00

    The unbelievable worthlessness of Windows 7 file search is astounding. I can not think of a better example to show how out of touch Microsoft is with computer users. Windows XP file search worked just fine. Now if you want to find a file and you do not know the exact file name or location --- you actually have to learn a special search syntax!!! If people are going to have to start learning things like this to do something as SIMPLE AS SEARCHING FILES - there is no reason at all they should not just use something like Linux or FreeBSD.

    I am trying to find any R program I have (the extention is ".r") on my computer.  When I do " ext:*.r" it pulls every file with any R in the name or within the file.  The most frustrating is any filename with an extention r???.  If I want those I will add those. or r*.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-02-14T23:45:57+00:00

    ext means extension. Your search term should thus be  ext:"r"

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-03-19T13:22:35+00:00

    Why does every link on this page lead to a Windows 8 advertisement screen?  It's really frustrating when you look for help online and all you get is links to spam pages.

    What I'm looking for, and haven't been able to find it, is a way to search for ONLY files that have a particular extension, even if other files START WITH that extension.  For example, I want to find all C# files in a folder and search for *.cs.  Windows finds every *.csv file.  Not what I want.  In Unix you can specify $ (for end of string) or ^ (for beginning of string).  You think *.cs$ would give me what I want, but it returns nothing.

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  4. Anonymous
    2013-03-19T14:23:19+00:00

    The post you replied to gave you the answer you need. To look for files with a particular extension, use the keyword ext. To limit the search to a precise string, rather than to all strings starting with the search string, enclose the search string in double quotes "".

    To find files with the extension cs but not csv, then, use ext:"cs"

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