Click on Windows Search settings when it appears. 1 Run the Settings app and search for “search”. You can instruct Windows Search to search your entire computer by changing a setting.

Those include your desktop and the Libraries (such as Documents, Music, and Pictures) shown in the left-hand pane of Windows File Explorer. Searching your entire computerīy default, Windows Search searches only a predefined set of locations. Information about the file is displayed at the right, including its location on the hard disk, along with links to open the file or the folder in which it’s contained. In my example above, the “Best match” is the file I was looking for. If you don’t see what you’re looking for right away, type more of the name. Once you stop typing and Windows catches up, you’ll see a list of results, as shown above. What you type will be displayed in a search box (which may or may not already have been present on the taskbar), and results will begin to appear. Searching for a file with Windows Search.

Windows 10 and 11 makes this simple.Ĭlick on the Start button and just start typing the name of the file, or some portion thereof. The traditional way to locate a file in Windows is the Search item on the Start menu.

There are a couple of ways to do so quickly, and there are a couple of “gotcha’s” as well, so let’s look at three common ways to track down that file you’re looking for: Windows Search, Windows File Explorer, and using the command prompt. How do I locate a file I know is on my computer?

As you might guess, that question reflects many different people asking roughly the same question in different ways.

How to find files by date on windows 10