search for a substring in file name with built in windows search
I am using windows 8 and I find that the built in search facility is not working as expected.
I have a folder like this
and when I search it like this, I get no result.
I would like the search tool to have matched on the partial file name.This question provides a good workaround, but ideally I would like to have this working out of the box. Is there a setting to change or any other means to get partial file search match without installing additional software?
Short answer: Use * (asterisk) or ~~ (double tilde). In order to search for a substring in the file name you must put the *
or ~~
in front. Hence, in order to have Windows find the MyFile.txt
you must search for *file*
or ~~file
and not file
. Think at ~~
as containing
.
The simple form (without asterisk) searches only at the beginning of the words in file name. Hence searching for file
will return File.txt
, My File.txt
, File 1.txt
(aso.) but will not return MyFile.txt
.
If you want the complete(?) Advanced Query Syntax have a look here. However I do not see in the AQS page linked the *
(any number of characters) ?
(just one character) and [ ]
(set of characters) wildcards.
Examples:
-
b?r
matchesbar
andbur
but notboor
-
b[ae]r
matchesbar
andber
but notbur
or anything else