Conducting the file search and using the results
After you finish specifying the search text, the location to search, and the results to return, you begin the search by clicking the Go button in the Basic File Search task pane. When you click this button, the Basic File Search task pane becomes a Search Results task pane, where Excel shows you all the files that contain your search text. If the workbook that you want to open appears in the Search Results task pane, you can click the Stop button to prevent Excel from doing any further searching.
To open a workbook file displayed in the Search Results task pane, click its file icon or position the mouse pointer on the icon and, when a pop-up button appears, click this button and then click the Edit with Microsoft Excel item on the pop-up menu.
If you're not sure from viewing the filenames alone which of the files displayed is the one that you want to open, position the mouse pointer on the file icon for a few seconds. A ToolTip showing the complete path to the file, along with the date that it was last modified, appears below the file icon. If this information alone isn't enough, click the file's pop-up button and then click Properties at the bottom of the popup menu. This action opens a Properties dialog box containing General, Custom, and Summary tabs that give you all sorts of information about the file. (Note that the Summary tab will be empty except for the Author if you didn't fill in this information prior to saving the workbook file.)
If your search returned more files than can be displayed together in the Search Results task pane, a Next x Results link (where x is the actual number of results) appears when you scroll down to the end of the list. Click this link to display the next group of ten results. If you find that you're not getting the results that you expected, click the Stop button at the bottom of the Search Results task pane and then click the Modify button (this button immediately replaces Stop when you click it) to return to the Basic File Search task pane. There, you can tweak your search criteria or even try narrowing the search by using the Advanced File Search feature.