Finding Your Lost Files on a MAC

As the geek said, there are times when you get busy and save a file and may not be watching where you saved it. Then you need to use it and can't find it! What do you do?

There is a program in the MAC system that could save you in this situation. This program is called Sherlock. The program is very simple to use.

This tutorial will show you where the program is, and how to use it.

This is a snapshot of a windows desktop. Click the Apple in the upper left hand corner.

The Apple menu contains programs that let you set up your MAC. Some of these will be familiar to you as you set up your printer, look for recent applications and documents, share documents,

The third icon from the bottom, is called Sherlock. This is the icon you click to find things, in various areas, including lost files.
   

Clicking Sherlock, a window will appear. On the top of the window there icons describing different categories where you can search. On the upper left hand side is an icon looking like a hard drive. Highlighting this icon will allow you to look for files on your hard drive.

Jumping around, in the middle you will see where you will be searching. Because the hard drive icon is highlighted, the hard drive named E-Charter 029 is showing.

Moving back up, the white strip is where you type in the name of the missing document. There are several ways you can search.

  1. By the entire document name including the extension (.doc)
  2. By the name of the document name excluding the extension
  3. Just the extension

You want to try to as specific as possible to narrow down the search.

Once you typed in the name of the document you are ready to search for it. Click the magnifying glass on the right side where you entered the document name and you are on your way!
   

Typing in the file name t3_test.doc in the white strip and clicking the magnifying glass resulted in the following results. Notice where it showed where were going to look for the document, it now shows the results of our search.

Next to the name, is a description of what kind of file it is. The first file is a MS Word 2001 file. The second document is a alias.

The nice thing about Sherlock is it gives you a graphical view of where the document is located. You can see that at the bottom of the window. BOY, I must have been really distracted if my Word document ended up in the folder it did!
   

I included this window to show what kind of results you would get if you tried to search using just the file extension. Sherlock will look through your entire hard drive and find all files and folders having the extension .doc.

In this example no path is showing on the bottom of the window because there is no file selected.

You can now add this to your arsenal of tools to help you when you get into a bind!