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Have you ever copied a document to your hard drive, but couldn’t remember where you saved it? Have you created a new file with a program and can’t figure out where to go when you want to attach it to an email? How about downloading a file from the web with your browser and then not knowing where to go to open it?

If any of these scenarios are familiar to you, then this tech tip should be helpful. We’ll start with the simplest methods and work our way to the more complicated.

1. Check the Recent Document Folder

In Windows XP, this is named Recent Documents.

In Windows Vista/7, this is named Recent Items.
Click on the Windows Start Button and scroll up the menu to either Recent Documents or Recent Items. There, you will find the last 15 files that you have opened/saved on your computer.

2. Check the Recently Used List in Your Applications

Looking for a file that you last used in Microsoft Word? Open Word and click File to see a list of recently used files. With Word 2007, you want to click on the circular “Office” button to display your most recently used files. Typically only the 5-15 most recently used files are listed in applications.

3. Check Your My Documents or Documents Folders

Microsoft Office applications usually save to those folders by default. If you never have had to specify a new location to save a file, your Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files are probably here.

4. Create a Fake File to Save

If you weren’t able to find your file with the two methods above, then creating a fake file with the application could work. Let’s say you know you created the file in Excel, but just don’t know where you saved it. Create a new file in Excel and go to Save As; you should see the directory where the files are being saved by default. That should give you a pretty good hint where the file is located. You can also right-click on file to bring up a menu of actions – re-save the file somewhere else, move it, email it, etc…

Applications usually remember the last location you saved a file, but often times that last location isn’t necessarily where you save every single file. This can be quite frustrating if your folder is in an uncommon location on your hard drive.

With most applications you can change the default location where the files are being saved. This option can usually be found within the Options or Preferences menu items.

Creating a fake file is particularly helpful for applications that save files to their own obscure default location. I usually try and save these files to my Desktop or to the Documents folder.

5. Use Windows Search to Find the File

If none of the easier methods have worked, you can always use the Search function that is built into Windows. This method will help you most quickly if you know the name of the file you are looking for. Even if you don’t remember the name, you can probably still find the file by searching by the date you may have last modified it, by a portion of the file name, by the size of the file, or even the document extension of the file. In extreme cases you can also search the contents of every file to match up with what you are looking for. You would only do this if you have absolutely no idea what the file name is or if it was mixed in with a bunch of the same file type.

In Windows XP: Click Start, Search, Select All Files and Folders, and then choose search criteria.

In Windows Vista/7: Click Start and then in the Start Search field, type what you think the document name is. With indexing turned on, you can also try typing a specific word that might only be in that document. Indexing makes searching the contents of a file nearly instantaneous. If nothing shows up in the search results, click search anywhere to bring up the Advanced Search menu. From there you will be able to search various criteria.

6. Additional Tips

The Search function is also a great way to organize your files. If I want to put all my pictures in one folder, I can search the entire drive for files that have the extension .jpg.

If I’m cleaning out my hard drive to free up space, I’ll start with Search to find the biggest files to delete first. For example, I could search for all files over 5 MB and delete what I don’t need.

June 7th, 2010