THE FILE PROGRAM EVERYTHING
©2022 Donald R. Snow -- Page last updated 2022-05-23
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ABSTRACT: EVERYTHING is a free program for Widows that searches your entire computer for file names containing any terms you specify. It works extremely fast and can be used to find "lost" files in any folder, if you know any characters or words in the file name. It has various settings to make it work the way you want and is very useful in family history and other uses.. Everything is a Windows program, but there is probably something comparable for Macs. The notes for this class and related
articles, all with active Internet links, are on Don's website
http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow of St. George and
Provo, Utah ( snowd@math.byu.edu
).
- These notes, with active Internet links and other
related articles, are posted on Don's website http://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
- Tips: (1) To put an icon on your desktop
for the URL for these notes, or any web page, just drag
the icon in front of the address in your browser to
your desktop. (2) To open a link while
keeping your place in the original page, hold down the
Control key while clicking the link so it opens in a
new tab.
- Problem for today: What is EVERYTHING
and how do you us it?
ABOUT EVERYTHING
- Free Windows program, download from --
https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/
- A;article --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_(software)
- To use it type into the search box at the top left the words
or characters you want to find in the
title and as you type you see files with those
words in them
- Leave a space and as you add words it
drops out files without those terms so it
barrows down the results immediately
- Any file in the results list can be
opened, renamed, deleted, moved, or otherwise
worked with by just clicking on it
- EVERYTHING is a WINDOWS program, but
there is probably something equivalent for
Macs.
- It will only search NTSF-formatted drives
and flash drives, not FAT nor FAT32 drives, but most
hard drives are formatted NTSF.
HELPS AND OPTIONS
- When you run EVERYTHING, across
the top are the words File, Edit,
View, Search, Bookmarks, Tools, and Help.
- Some of these are
standard for WINDOWS programs. Pressing
Help (or F1) takes
you to their website
http://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/
which has 20-25 well-explained help topics.
- The Installing section
shows how to install it on various
computer operating systems and
even how to use it as a portable
program, so it can be run from a
flash drive and doesn't need to be
installed on the computer to
be searched.
- The Using Everything section
gives you a quick
run-through.
- The Searching section shows
the search syntax
including the Boolean operators and
wildcards, modifiers, and
function syntax.
- The program really has a complete set of
search parameters. In the Helps menu, down at
the bottom of the
Searching section, are examples of how to do
different kinds of
searches.
- The Options Help section shows how
to set the program
for searching and showing the
results the way
you want.
- When running the program, I
turn on the "
Show Search Terms Bold"
in Options, so each search character
or term is in the
results list.
FINDING FILES OR FOLDERS
- The basic search syntax is as
follows. space = AND, ! = NOT,
| = OR, " " = exact phrase, < > = grouping,
and * = wildcard
for one or more characters. There are several search examples
on the Help > Searching menu.
- Note that
first in the
results list will be all folders that
satisfy the search
criteria, followed by all the files
satisfying it.
- To search
for just files include "file:"
(without the quotes)
in the
search box.
- For just folders include
"folder:" (without the
quotes).
-
As an example, to search for all photos on
your computer, enter jpg | .tif | .png , etc.
- My naming process is explained in detail
elsewhere, but is a
system so that by using EVERYTHING, all files
related to a
person alphabetize in chronological order for the person.
- When I find a lost file on my computer that relates to
someone name it with my system, or just give it a
temporary name, so it will show up later near where it
belongs next time I use EVERYTHING to work on that person.
Then I can give it a full correct name.
PREVIEW PANE
-
EVERYTHING has a Preview Pane so you can see
what's in the file
without opening it in whatever its
default program is. This
is extremely helpful.
- Turn on the
Preview Pane at View > Preview. You now see the first ppage of the file in the panel to the right
where the file path used to be.
-
You
can make the panel
larger or smaller by dragging the
separator in the title
bar. Now, when a file is highlighted, its
contents are
shown in the Preview Pane and you can
work with it without
having to open it in a program.
LARGE THUMBNAIL VIEW
- This shows the files as thumbnails
and makes it easy to find some that you
are looking for.
- If you know what the first page looks like, e.g. text or
a particular colored paper, etc., you
may be able to find it by just using
this feature.
CONCLUSIONS
- The free program EVERYTHING is extremely
helpful and I keep finding new things that it will do.
- You might try it out and see if it is helpful to you.
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