Finding Your Lost Files on a PC
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 little known program in Windows that could save you in this situation. This program is called Find. 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. At the bottom is your start button. Go ahead and click it.
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This should look familiar, this menu is where you can go to a program menu, favorites, settings, Run (to install programs) The fourth icon from the bottom, is an icon called Find. This is the icon you click to find several things, couple of them being missing programs and files. |
| Clicking the find icon, another menu bar will appear. On this menu bar you can find a variety of different categories. On the very top you will see Files or Folders. Click this to look for a file or program on your computer |
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Clicking the Files or Folders icon, this window appears. The default is Name & Location. Note: you can try to locate files and programs by Date. Almost 99% of the time you will use the default. The window asks you where to Look in. If you have an idea where the file or program might be located, you can pick a location. In this example, the program will look in the local hard drives. |
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I typed in the of the document I am looking for. You have to remember the spelling of the file. It is not necessary for you to include the file extension. In this instance I included the .doc in the name. Again, you can choose where you want the program to look, but because you don't know where the file is, you should keep it at this default which is to look at all the drives on your computer. |
At
this point you must REMAIN calm as it will take several minutes for
the program to search through all of your hard drives.
You can stop the search at any time, especially if you think the program
found your missing file.
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Here is the results of the search through my C: and D: drives on my computer. Looks like I may have had a memory lapse or like name files with the same name! There are three places that contain a file called t3test.doc. You can view these files by just clicking on the name of the file. |
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You can now add this to your arsenal of tools to help you when you get into a bind!