search for a substring in file name with built in windows search

Question

I am using windows 8 and I find that the built in search facility is not working as expected.

I have a folder like this

and when I search it like this, I get no result.

I would like the search tool to have matched on the partial file name.This question provides a good workaround, but ideally I would like to have this working out of the box. Is there a setting to change or any other means to get partial file search match without installing additional software?

Answer 1

Short answer: Use * (asterisk) or ~~ (double tilde). In order to search for a substring in the file name you must put the * or ~~ in front. Hence, in order to have Windows find the MyFile.txt you must search for *file* or ~~file and not file. Think at ~~ as containing.

The simple form (without asterisk) searches only at the beginning of the words in file name. Hence searching for file will return File.txt, My File.txt, File 1.txt (aso.) but will not return MyFile.txt.

If you want the complete(?) Advanced Query Syntax have a look here. However I do not see in the AQS page linked the * (any number of characters) ? (just one character) and [ ] (set of characters) wildcards.

Examples:

• b?r matches bar and bur but not boor
• b[ae]r matches bar and ber but not bur or anything else