Find an Elusive Office Document Fast

I can't remember what I named a particular Word document and I have hundreds of them. Is there any way to find it without opening every single one?

This question was answered on August 2, 2006. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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Let's say you're in MS Word (or maybe Excel or PowerPoint) and you've got a whole list of files Unfortunately, the names aren't giving you enough information to decide which one you're actually looking for What do you do? You could systematically open each suspect file until you find the right one Or, you could set the program to show you a file preview while you're in the Open window If that sounds better to you keep reading:

First, you'll need to go to the Open window (File menu and click Open.

When the Open window is displayed, you're probably looking at a list of file names.

Depending upon the version of Office you're using, the Open window varies slightly, but it's pretty much all the same.

To the right of the "Look in" drop down list, you'll find a series of buttons.

You're looking for the Views button.

This opens into a list of choices.

You'll need to select Preview from the list.

Instantly the window is split into two sections A list of files on the left and the preview of the selected file on the right.

This one doesn't fix the fact that we seem to name files in ways that aren't always helpful later on, but it sure takes some of the guess work out of finding them again Cheers!

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Posted by Chad of Data Doctors on August 2, 2006

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