Windows 10: File Explorer Search

Hello,


I have Windows 10 on a Dell laptop and my File Explorer search finds most of my files but seems to ignore a few, even when I'm searching in the very folder in which they are saved and even when I search for their name rather than for words that occur inside them. This is very inconvenient because I regularly use large corpora of bilingual documents to translate and need to be able to search for key terms inside all of them in order to know in which ones to look for a particular translation. I cannot afford to open a thousand documents one by one to look for a key term in each one individually.


I have noticed the described problem with Word files but it might affect other types of files too unbeknownst to me. When I right-click on the files that search cannot find and view their properties, they are missing the custom tab and do not show statistics in the details tab word count, line count etc.; all of these attributes are listed, but there is no value indicated for them, only empty space, even though their statistics are correctly calculated when I actually open them in Word. I therefore believe that something is wrong with the properties of the problematic files rather than with the search function itself. However, I don't know which properties I should modify and have not even noticed any differences between their properties and the properties of files that the search function detects successfully: all of my Word files have full control enabled, all of them have indexed contexts, none of them are read-only, etc. I have also noticed that when I duplicate one of the undetectable files, rename the copy and create new content inside it, the copy retains the properties of the original and is therefore undetectable too and missing the custom tab and the statistics. Could someone please explain to me how this problem is to be remedied? I would like to point out that I am not willing to reset my laptop to factory settings or take any similar drastic measures which would result in me having to reinstall and retransfer countless programs and files.


P.S. I rebuilt the index but nothing changed - the same files are still undetectable.

P.P.S. I do not have gpedit.msc when I type it into the Cortana search bar, I get redirected to the Internet and cannot use it to tinker with File Explorer as has been suggested in some other threads.

:)

 

File Explorer Search Not Working


I am trying to search in File Explorer (Windows Explorer, My Computer) and it will not find anything. I can copy text from a name in the list and paste it in the search box and it still finds nothing. I have looked at the suggestions that have been posted and nothing I find that is relative to this works. Anyone have any suggestions? I am running Win 10 Pro on an I3 coustom desktop computer.

 

setting default view for Winodws Explorer Search Reasults

Thank you for the detailed response. To change the search result's view from content to list, we suggest following the steps below:

• Open the File Explorer and try to search for files.
• In the toolbar, open the View tab and click List
  to change the view.
• Once changed, close the File Explorer.
• Open the File Explorer again and try to search to see if the setting has been retained.

After performing the steps above, reply back to us so we can provide additional help.

 

Search for Missing files in File Explorer

Hi,

Thank you for writing to Microsoft Community Forums.

I understand that you are looking for a file named “Class” with the length of the file. However, currently File Explorer doesn’t have the option to search the files using the length.

You can follow the steps mentioned below to search for a file in File Explorer using the Size, Kind of file and other options.

1. Press and hold Windows key + E to open
   File Explorer.
   
2. Click on This PC on the left pane.
   
3. Press F3 key to open Search options.
   
4. You can select the Size,
   Kind of file and other options and then, search for the file.
   

Hope it helps.

Please reply with the status of the issue, we will be glad to help you further.

Nikhar Khare

Microsoft Community - Moderator