Windows does offer some help in locating lost files. But there is no 100% guarantee to find what you are missing. The find utility can help you track down files if you remember something about the name you gave it when saving it.

Click on START, then FIND and you have opened the find files utility. Remember to start your search at the largest level, that is your entire hard drive (C:). Also remember to check on "include subfolders" so that your searching will look at every folder within the system.

The name and location find looks by file name and folder location

Do not try to type the entire file name exactly as you saved it. It’s better to use some wild card symbols in the file name just in case you cannot remember the exact name.

Wild card symbols are the asterisk (*) and the question mark (?).

Files are usually saved with two part names, the descrptive name followed by a period (.) followed by a 3 character file extension. Generally programs use a standard extension for their own files.

• MS Word Documents usually have an extension of DOC

• Corel Wordperfect have an extension of WPD

• MS Excel have an extension of XLS

• MS Powerpoint has an extension of PPT

If you know you are looking for a Word Document, type the first two or three letters of the descriptive name followed by *, followed by . then followed by DOC. The asterisk indicates any characters after the first two or three, the DOC indicates this was a Word document. If you are sure of more than three letters of the descriptive file name, go ahead and put them in. Just ask yourself how sure you really are.

The date modified find narrows your search to dates you may have last saved the file

The advanced find gives you other options and choices to narrow your search.