Have you ever needed to find something you had written in an earlier proposal but had no idea where to find it? Being able to search across multiple proposals has been a frequently requested product feature at Expedience, as well as during my time at Pragmatech. The good news is that you don’t need special software to do this. You can use Window’s built-in search capabilities. If you have tried this in the past without luck, don’t despair. We will go step by step and show you how to do a ‘Proposal Search’ using just Windows File Explorer.
The examples in this post will be using Windows 8.1, but the technique is similar in Windows 7.Step 1: Open Windows File Explorer
In Windows 8.1, Right click on the Windows Start Button to display the Start Menu: (Windows 7 simply click on the Start button) and select ‘File Explorer’Step 2: Customize View in Windows File Explorer
Click on the View Tab. Select to view as ‘Content.’ Make sure to turn on the ‘Preview’ pane.
Step 3: Type text into the Windows File Search Box
In this example I am going to search for the word ‘Macro’ in my ‘BLOG’ folder, to find all the documents that I wrote about custom macros. Here are the results:Step 4: Set Search Options in Search Tools Tab
You may have noticed that when you click inside the Search Box the ‘Search Tools’ tab appears:Setting ‘Date Modified’ Search option:
Click on the ‘Date Modified’ drop-down to narrow your search to recent documents.Macro datemodified:December 2014
Here are the results:Set the ‘Kind’ of file in Window’s Search Options
In our example we are searching for Word documents that I later made into Blog posts. Using the ‘Kind’ operator will find files with all document extensions (.doc, .docm, .dotm, etc.)Macro datemodified:December 2014 kind:=document
Set the ‘Size’ option in Window’s File Search:
I am looking for articles that will be posted in this Blog. Some of the documents are small and some are medium.I will start by selecting ‘small’
Macro datemodified:December 2014 kind:=document size:small
and editing the text box:Macro datemodified:December 2014 kind:=document size:>10 KB AND < 1 MB
Here are the results:Summary of Steps to Search Proposal Documents:
- Open File Explorer (Windows Button + ‘E’)
- Click ‘View’ Tab:
- Open Navigation Pane and locate folder to search (Close Navigation Pane if desired)
- Select ‘Preview Pane’ to open document viewer
- Select ‘Content’ layout to show search text excerpts
- Enter text into ‘Search Box’
- Set options in ‘Search Tools‘ tab to narrow search if desired.