How to find a file?

J

jprupas

Registered
I am having trouble locating a file on my hard rives.

I can't recall the "name" of the Excel file but I have the hardcopy and know the content of the file.

Is there anyway to search the hard drive for files (knowing only the content of the file)?

If so, how do I go about it? I know the document contains unique characters such as ( hnd-lvk and IDP-AMA )

Thanks so much. I really need to find this document that is hiding.
 
If you are running Tiger, click on the Spotlight icon (blue icon, top right corner), and type your unique text. Any relevant documents/folders/apps/etc will show while you are still typing, and you should find your document in less than 20 seconds, assuming it still exists on your hard drive.
 
If you have Tiger, Spotlight should, in theory, automatically search for file contents.

You can also use EasyFind, which works on Panther. EasyFind is very useful even for Tiger users, so I recommend giving it a look.
 
If you're using Tiger, spotlight might have indexed the contents of the file. In which case, you're golden.

Otherwise, you could try the unix way... In terminal:

find / -name *.xls -print0 | xargs -0 grep hnd-lvk

Note that that's -print(zero) and -(zero) not -print(capital o) and -(capital o).

That says: find all files on the entire computer, whose name matches *.xls (i.e. whose name ends in .xls), put a null character between matching filenames (avoids trouble with spaces in folder names and such). Search the contents of the files for the text "hnd-lvk" (and expect the filenames to be separated by null characters).

good luck.
 
I appreciate the responses. I tried both and no results.

If spotlight and the other program are doing their job, perhaps the file was deleted on accident. :( grrrrrrr

Thanks
 
If the file has been used lately, it may be under the file menu, as one of the last few files you used. Also, in project manager, you can use the tab to view the last several files you have used.
 
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