How to Perform an Advanced File Search in Word 2003

If the Basic File Search (see Resources) didn’t provide the results you wanted in your quest to find a missing file, try this advanced file search. This process also works with Excel, Access, PowerPoint, and Publisher.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Microsoft Office 2003

1. Start File Search To get to the Search feature, with any of the Microsoft Office 2003 software open, click on File in the top menu bar, and then click on File Search. The Basic File Search task pane will display.
2. Advanced Link On the Basic File Search task pane, under “See also”, click on the link to “Advanced File Search.” The Advanced File Search task pane will display.
3. Property Search Under “Search for” on the Advanced File Search task pane, click the down arrow of “Property” to select a specific element that you can give a value to as a means to further qualify the search. The Property listing will accommodate any Microsoft Office software, so you will see items in the listing that may not function in the software you have open. For a sample search, you might choose a Property reference of “Number of pages” because you recall approximately how many pages there were (or exactly how many pages, if you are lucky).
4. Property & Condition Then for a Condition, continuing with our sample search of number of pages, if you know exactly how many pages there are in the file you are attempting to locate, leave the Condition at “equals” and then type the number of pages in the Value box as 10 (or whatever the number of pages is). Click the Add button.
   
   If you do not recall the exact number of pages, but know that it was more than 10, then choose a Condition of “more than” and type 10 in the Value box, then click the Add button.
   
   You can further qualify the number of pages by indicating it was less than a certain number, like 12, by leaving the Property at “number of pages”, but change the Condition to “less than”, then type 12 in the Value box, and then click the Add button.
   
   NOTE: You can also use the radio buttons for “And” or “Or” in the Search for section. Using our number of pages as a continuing example, you may recall that the number of pages was either 34 or 43. So you would enter a Condition of equal, input the Value of 34, add that criteria, return to the Value box and type in 43, click the “Or” radio button, and then click Add. The search would then be for a document of 34 or 43 pages.
5. You can continue to select more Property elements to add a Condition and then click Go (Step 7) OR, you can use the “Other Search Options” described in Step 6.
6. Other Options As with the Basic File Search (click the link in Resources below for details), you can select what location and file types you want to search. Click the plus signs to expand them, then check (or uncheck) boxes to narrow the search criteria.
7. Now click the Go button. After you click Go, the button will read Stop. Depending on how many locations that Word has to search for the file and how many files you have in the locations chosen, it can take from seconds to many minutes to produce a listing of possible files.
   
   If the button reads Modify, then the file was not found. You can click the Modify button to add, remove, or change search criteria.

Tips & Warnings

• For an alternative search process, you can click on File and then Open. On the Open dialog box, click on Tools located in the upper left, and the click on Search. The File Search dialog box will display. Click on the Advanced tab.