what is the syntax to specify "OR" in windows 7 file search?

Question

I have a text file with a list of numbers.

I have a directory with a lot of documents.

I would like to find all documents in the directory where the title contains one or more of the list of numbers.

So if I type 100 in the search box in Windows 7, I will get all documents where there is "100" in the title (eg. 100 Phone input box.docx).

Is it possible using windows search to put in a query like this "100 OR 130 OR 105"

and have windows only display documents where there is 100 or 130 or 105 in the title?

Answer 1

You CAN do that! When using boolean AND or OR in Windows file searching you have to have capital letters though.

Take a look here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/Tips-for-finding-files for even more helpful information on file searching in Windows. Note that the article says "Windows Vista" but is the same in Windows 7.

The boolean filters are more towards the bottom of the article. What I find most helpful is combining file properties with the boolean filters to really dig down deep.

Not the native file search, but another great utility I like for Windows is the Locate32 application. http://www.locate32.net/ I found it some time ago (when I was on Windows XP actually) when looking for a less-bloated third-party search application. Its very feature rich and has great abilities to filter down the searches to only what you need. You also control the indexing unlike the Google Desktop or other bloated searching apps. Just in case you were looking for something a little more than the built-in search.