Tips on Finding
Files
By Tony Angiola
Field Technician
So you downloaded a cool picture from the web and
now want to view it but have no idea where it went. Perhaps you got an email with an attachment, when you opened
the email it was right there and thought you saved it but don’t want to have to open your email client to see it
or maybe you already deleted the email. These tips on finding files will help since there are so many different
scenarios that involve downloading from the Internet and not knowing where those files end up…unless you know
the tricks.
Most of the time when you go to download
something from the Internet, you are presented with a dialog box that asks you where you wish to save the
file. Sounds simple, but sometimes the default download location can look
confusing. Most of the time users like to simply use the “Desktop” as the “go to” location for
saving documents and files. This works great if you are downloading once in a while and just need one or two files
and then intend on storing them somewhere else. (Leaving items on the
desktop is not a good idea because they are not protected. Its best to place files in
“my documents” so that if a restore takes place on your operating system you will not lose data on the desktop.)
If you are downloading things from the internet either by RIGHT CLICK functions or clicking links for file
downloads then you should already know how to create folders on your computer and have some basic understanding
of the file structure on your C drive. I recommend that you use a
USB drive to store your important data, even your downloads if they mean something to you. After 20+ years of working
on computers I have had my share of lost data and worked on more PC’s and situations where data loss could have
been prevented if the data was just stored on a drive that was not the primary drive which holds the Operating
System. You may ask yourself “then why do I have such a large C drive?”. This is the way technology
goes. It’s always getting smaller, faster, lighter etc. Truth is you want a decent
size C drive simply because as drives get larger so do the Operating Systems and their
updates. You can use the C drive as a temp drive for your data and downloads as long as your
diligent about moving or copying that data to a USB drive.
Your computer comes with some pretty good search
features. In Windows XP and Vista just click on the Start button and you will see a button for
“Search”. Clicking this button will launch the search program. Before the program launches you see
a choice to search “On the Internet, Files or Folders, Find Printers etc”. Typically you will select
“For Files or Folders”. You will see a graphic of a dog offering to help you search for what you’re looking for
and again more choices of what to search for. You will most likely use
the “All files and folders” option. In the search field you
can use a wild card “*” which can be used in various places as a variable. So if you are searching
for your pictures and all you know is that they are .jpg type *.jpg in the search field and click
search. All files that have a .jpg extension will appear on the right.
There are many third party search tools available
and many of them are free. Check out Google Desktop search. There is also a great free
tool called Locate32 which is a tool that will index everything on your computer on a regular basis to make its
searching really fast. Still, the best way not to lose a file or a download is to pay attention to the dialog
box that is asking where you want to put it and know where that is. If you have a download program
like Internet Download Manager then that program has a special path to a download program just for that download
program. There are many advantages to using Internet Download Manager and other download manager
but I will talk about that in another article.
Tips on finding files
Check out Web Watcher :
| 
