Everything is Probably the Fastest File Name Search Tool For Windows

Windows Vista introduced the “search” in start menu to help users search computer files and other data quickly. You could simply type in some text, and the search results would appear in realtime. Obviously, Windows needs to index the files on your PC to deliver this search functionality.

However, you will notice that file indexing operations consume a certain amount of system resources (especially hard disk space). Over time, the file index database may not be able to reflect the real-time changes of file system, either. Hence there’s the need for better file search tools, like Everything.

Like the tool UltraSearch we have introduced before, Everything doesn’t add any services to your system, and it directly searches the Master File Table (MFT) for delivering results. By using Everything, millions of files can be indexed within few seconds, and then you can get the instant search results as you type the keywords. Fantastic, isn’t it?

Here’s how it works.

Just unzip and launch Everything, and the program will automatically index all your file names in NTFS partitions. All you need do is to type in the keywords into the search box, and then you will see the results.

For more accurate searching, you can click on “Search” menu to enable “Match Case”, “Math Whole Word”, “Match Path” or even regular expressions.

After the searching, you can easily export the results by using “File > Export”. In “Tools > Options”, there are many configurations that can be customized. You can let it start on system startup,  integrate to file context menu, or set hotkeys for launching a new search window.

In “View” tab, you can use the corresponding options to refine the search

There’s also the the “Exclude” tab that lets you exclude specific files and folders from the search results. If you are interested in file server features, you could use “ETP/FTP” and “HTTP” tabs, configure them properly, and Everything will do its work.

Note: Everything only work on NTFS partitions, so if you are still using FAT32, you can convert file system and then use this tool.

Download Everything to speed up your file search in Windows.