I want to thank this group for the suggestion of Everything.exe as a file search program for my desktop computer. It has really made finding my files on my hard drive a breeze.

I use it all the time. Development was at a standstill for years but recently I was surprised to see that the author had started updating it again. current beta version is 1.3.3.658b.

I do like Everything but I find myself using it less frequently these days, only when I'm looking for some very obscure system file in the bowels of my machine.

It could be that the nature of my work has changed, but it also could be that having become a Dopus user I end up remembering where my files are better. Also, I link to all important files from my Freeplane dashboard and from ConnectedText, so those may also help.

I also use Direct Folders for quick access to recently used folders, and on top of that I have Listary Pro, which pulls up files as I type their names in dialog boxes.

I also have Copernic, which I do use for searching specific folders for specific types of files and for quicky browsing through the results (to look inside the files). If I still can't find a file, then I turn to Everything.

I've tried and abandoned a number of file search programs over the years. The only two that I still use are dtSearch and FileLocator Pro.

I use dtSearch for research in a large collection of mostly pdf documents, but for everything else, FileLocator Pro is my search program of choice. FLP doesn't index anything, so It is slower than index-based programs, but it is fast enough for my needs, even with large numbers of files (10,000+) and much more flexible than anything else I have seen, which makes it ideal for ad hoc searches. It also has a portable version and can search inside epub books, which are features that seem to be rare among search programs.

Dr Andus wrote:

I also use Direct Folders for quick access to recently used folders, and
on top of that I have Listary Pro, which pulls up files as I type their
names in dialog boxes.

Listary Pro 50% off on BdJ today:
http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/listary-pro-2

I use Archivarius 3000:
http://www.likasoft.com

Another entrant into the file search arena (beta): FileSearchy

http://www.filesearchy.com/

Interesting - from Midlinesoft, who used to produce a nice little search prog not dissimilar to File Locator (MultiFind). This looks like a simple-to-use prog with a couple of nice features (notably a search result clumping graph).

Thanks for the reminder of FileLocator - even the Lite version is astonishingly powerful. I'd forgotten!

And dtSearch is one of the true greats; still pretty much unmatched by anything else. Well, anything affordable, at any rate!

Dr Andus wrote:

Another entrant into the file search arena (beta): FileSearchy

http://www.filesearchy.com/

FileSearchy 1.22 can now rank search results by the number of matches within a document. Useful for instance when searching a folder of PDFs for documents that have the highest number of instances of a particular search term.