Narrow file search results with wildcards, size and dates
You type report and get two thousand results. Every monthly report, every draft, every copy someone saved to the shared drive. The file you want is in there somewhere, and scrolling is not a plan.
A few extra words in the search box fix most of this. The examples below are for Chatda, a free file search app for Windows 10 and 11 and macOS, but the ideas carry over: say what kind of file it is, roughly when it changed, roughly how big it is, and where it lives.
Say which words must be there, and which must not
Several words mean all of them have to appear: contract 2026 only finds files with both. To leave something out, put a minus or an exclamation mark in front of it. contract -draft and contract !draft both hide anything that contains "draft".
Words in quotes have to appear together and in that order, so "payment statement" won't match a file that says "statement of payment".
OR (or a vertical bar) gives you either one: apple OR pear, apple | pear.
Wildcards: * and ?
A star stands for any run of characters. report*2024 finds names that start with "report" and end with "2024", whatever sits in between. A question mark is exactly one character: v?.docx finds v1.docx and v2.docx.
A word with a wildcard is matched against the file name, extension included. If the word has a \ or / in it, it's matched against the full path instead, so projects\*.pdf finds PDFs in a "projects" folder.
File types
*.xlsx limits the results to Excel files. Put several in braces to allow any of them: *.{xlsx,docx,pdf}. Add a word in front and you get files of that type with the word in them: report *.xlsx.
The same thing written as a function is ext:pdf;docx. If you don't remember which extensions belong to a kind of file, there are shortcuts:
| Type this | To get |
|---|---|
doc: |
Documents (pdf, docx, xlsx, pptx, hwp, txt, md, csv and more) |
pic: |
Pictures (jpg, png, gif, heic, psd and more) |
video: or audio: |
Video or audio files |
zip: |
Archives (zip, 7z, rar and more) |
exe: |
Programs (exe, msi, bat, cmd, com, ps1) |
File types also work with OR, and then they only apply to their own side. report *.pdf OR invoice finds PDF files that contain "report", plus any file that contains "invoice". A minus in front of a type leaves it out: report -*.pdf shows every report except the PDFs.
file: keeps only files and folder: keeps only folders.
Size
Size is useful when you remember that a file was "the big one" or that it came out empty.
| Type this | To get |
|---|---|
size:>10mb |
Larger than 10 MB (also >=, <, <=, and units b, kb, mb, gb, tb) |
size:1mb..5mb |
Between 1 MB and 5 MB |
size:empty |
0 bytes |
size:tiny, small, medium |
Up to 10 KB, 10 to 100 KB, 100 KB to 1 MB |
size:large, huge, gigantic |
1 to 16 MB, 16 to 128 MB, over 128 MB |
Date modified
dm: filters by when a file last changed, in your local time. datemodified: works too.
| Type this | To get |
|---|---|
dm:today, dm:yesterday |
Changed today or yesterday |
dm:thisweek, dm:thismonth, dm:thisyear |
This week (from Monday), this month, this year |
dm:2026-03 |
Any day in March 2026 (also a year, or a single day like dm:2026-03-15) |
dm:>2025-12-31 |
After the end of 2025 |
dm:2025..2026-02 |
From the start of 2025 to the end of February 2026 |
If you'd rather click, the Date dropdown above the results offers today, the past week, month and year. "Past year" there means the last 365 days, not since January 1.
Where it lives
path:clients keeps results whose full path contains "clients". Use it more than once and every one has to match. Or pick one folder under All locations ▾ at the top to search only inside it.
Putting it together
These combine freely. One search can say all of it at once:
quote ext:xlsx dm:thismonth path:clients
That finds Excel files under a "clients" folder, changed this month, that contain "quote".
A few more that tend to come up:
invoice *.pdf dm:thisyear -draftfor this year's invoices without the drafts.pic: size:>5mbfor large pictures that are filling up a folder."meeting notes" dm:thisweekfor this week's notes, wherever they were saved.report*2024 OR summary *.docxfor 2024 reports of any type, plus summaries in Word.
If a search comes back empty, take one condition away at a time until results appear. The last one you removed is usually the one that didn't fit. The help page lists every operator, and you can open it inside the app from the ? button.