Making the Most of the File Search Task Pane

If the workbook file you want to work with is not among the four files listed in the Recently Used file list, your next line of defense is the Search feature in the Open dialog box. You can access this feature right from the worksheet window. Just use the Basic File Search task pane, which you can open by choosing File → File Search. Doing a basic file search

The Basic File Search task pane contains the following three boxes that you can use in conducting your file search:

• Search Text is the text box where you enter one or more words contained in the file that you want to find. If you're unsure of how certain words are spelled, you can use the wildcard characters ? and * when entering the search text:

  The ? wildcard stands for a single character so that entering t?m finds files that contain Tim and Tom but not team and trim.
  
  The * wildcard character stands for any number of characters so that entering t*m finds files that contain all four words in the preceding example.

• Search In is the combo box where you can specify the place on your computer system to search. By default, Excel searches everywhere on your computer (including the desktop, My Documents folder, all local disk drives, and all shared document folders).
  To restrict the search to just your local hard disk, click the Search In drop-down button, click the My Computer expand button (the one with the +), and then clear the check marks from all the elements except for Local Disk (C:).
  To restrict the search on your hard disk to just certain folders, click the Local Disk (C:) Expand button and then clear the check boxes from all the folders that you don't want searched.
  If you're part of a network and think that the workbook may be saved on a networked drive, select the My Network Places check box. (Note that some networks don't support searching, in which case you'll receive a message telling you that it is an unavailable location when you perform the search.)
• Results Should Be is the drop-down list box where you can specify what types of files to find. To restrict this list to Excel workbook and template files only, clear the Office Files check box and then select just the Excel Files check box.

When you do a basic search, Excel finds workbook files that contain any form of the words that you enter as the search text. For example, if you enter invest in the Search Text field, Excel finds files that contain invest, investing, invested, investor, and investments. The program also searches for an occurrence of the words in the cells in all the worksheets in the workbook and in the Keywords and other fields entered on the Summary tab of the file's Properties dialog box.