How to Find Recently Modified Files
Open the Find Recently Modified dialog
-
 Select
Find
| Old Files...
or (Alt+I,O)
from the main menu to open the dialog where you
can specify exactly which files you want to
find.
- If one or more folders are selected they will be
automatically entered into the Paths
filed of the dialog when it opens
- FileBoss remembers what has been searched in the
past even when it has been closed and then started
again so you can always select a previous entry
using the drop down list
Specify what you want to find
Click image for more
options
-
Select
the drives or paths you want to check. Multiple
paths are separated with the semi-colon (;),
comma (,) or bar character (|).
You can even specify folders to exclude by
preceding the name with a minus sign. For
complete details right-click the field in the
program.
-
Select
the type of time you are looking for. Normally
it is best to use the Modified or possibly
Accessed time.
The Created
time can be very misleading as Windows tends to
reset the Created times inconsistently.
-
Then
select the time frame you are looking for. There
are three types of time frames,
During,
In the Last and
Between.
-
Finally select the value for the time frame,
e.g. the number of hours, minutes days, months,
whatever is appropriate for your time frame.
-
Click
OK to search and create a Virtual Folder of all
matching files
In the above example FileBoss will search for
all files which have not been since mid-night on the
current day
Hint:
You can
limit your search (and thus speed it up
and make its results more meaningful) by
specifying one or more folders to search instead
of just a whole drive. You can also, in the
Patterns field, specify only certain files to
search file such as
*.doc ; *.jpg ; *.jpeg
; *.html ; *.htm.
More about entering multiple paths and patterns
Both the paths and file patterns fields can accept
either simple entries, e.g.
C\Data\My Data and *.bmp or very
complex strings that specify not only what to include but also what to
exclude from a, most typically, search.
For instance both can specify multiple objects such as
C\Data\My Data ; D:\Backup\MyData
and
*.bmp ; *.gif ; *.png ; *.jpeg ; *.jpg
For a complete description of these fields either right-click the
mouse over the fields for context help from within FileBoss or see
Advanced Paths & Patterns.
To Search for Files based on their times using
an Explore View
-
Activate or
open an Explore View
- Make sure that the column for showing the
Modified,
Accessed and/or
Created
file times is visible (if not see the next section
for how to display the column).
-
Click on the
appropriate Column header twice to sort all
entries by most recent file times
Innovative File Time Modes
FileBoss has innovative alternatives to the
traditional way of displaying file times.
(Optional of course!)
The first shows file times by age, e.g. 8
minutes ago, 2 hours ago.
Both methods can be really handy when you have
an Explore view or Virtual Folder sorted by file
times. And you can quickly switch between any of
the three modes (traditional, by age, by
calendar period) using the button on the top
tool bar or using the View | File Times
> main menu items.
 
The second shows file times by by calendar
period, e.g. in February, 2007
Hint:
If you are looking at folders that contain lots
of files and you know the extension or
possible extensions of the file(s) you are looking
for you can use a File Filter to only display
those files.
Or you can even used Advanced Filtering to only
show files with Modified times in the range you
want.
Displaying the File Times in the Contents Window(If the file times are not already displayed in
the Contents Window)
-
This
works the same in both Explore Views and Virtual
File Sets.
-
Move the mouse over the column headers (the
column headers are at the top of the Contents
Window and have titles like Filename, Ext and
Size.)
-
Right-click the to display a list of
columns that can be displayed
-
Check the boxes next to
Modified, Accessed
or Created as
appropriate.
-
Click
the Close Menu button.
Hint:
You can change the order of the columns by
clicking a header with the left mouse button and,
while holding the mouse button down, dragging the
column to its new location.
Sorting by Times
-
Simply
click on one of the file time
columns. To reverse the sort click the column
again.
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