FILE SEARCH FAQ

FolderSizes includes an advanced search tool that can find files matching specific size criteria across entire drives or network shares.

To find very large files:

• Open the Search tool and add a file size rule
• Set the operator to greater than and specify the threshold (e.g., 1 GB)
• Choose one or more drives or network paths to search
• Results appear in a sortable list showing file name, full path, size, and dates

Why this is more effective than Windows search:

• No indexing dependency — FolderSizes scans the file system directly, so it finds files that Windows Search may miss due to indexing gaps
• Multiple drives at once — Search across local drives, external drives, and network shares in a single operation
• Combine with other criteria — Add rules for file age, name pattern, attributes, or owner to narrow results further
• Take action immediately — Move, copy, delete, or archive files directly from the search results

FolderSizes ships with a ready-made “Find Huge (Over 1 GB) Files” sample search that you can load and run immediately, or customize to use a different size threshold.

FolderSizes search supports flexible date-based criteria that make it easy to find stale files.

Setting up a date-based search:

• Add a file date rule and choose which timestamp to match: created, last modified, or last accessed
• Use the “not within the last” preset to find files older than a threshold — for example, documents not modified in the last 5 years
• Alternatively, specify an exact date range for precise control
• Combine with a file name pattern (e.g., *.doc;*.docx;*.pdf;*.xls;*.xlsx;*.ppt;*.pptx) to target specific document types

The included “Find Old Documents” sample search demonstrates this pattern — it searches for common document formats that haven't been modified in 7 years, making it a useful starting point for identifying stale business data.

Practical applications:

• Data retention compliance — Identify documents that have exceeded their retention period
• Storage cleanup — Archive or remove documents that are clearly no longer in active use
• Migration planning — Decide what to migrate vs. archive when moving to new storage

FolderSizes search includes date presets that make it simple to find files based on recency.

Using date presets:

• Add a file date rule and select “within the last”
• Choose a time unit: days, weeks, months, or years
• Enter the value — for example, “within the last 30 days” or “within the last 2 weeks”
• Choose whether to match by creation date or last modified date

The included “Find Recently Created Documents” sample search finds document files created in the last 30 days, excluding hidden and system files.

Use cases:

• Activity monitoring — See what's being added to a file server or shared drive
• Rapid growth investigation — When a drive is filling up quickly, find what's been added recently
• Post-incident review — After a security event, identify files created or modified in a specific timeframe

Empty folders accumulate over time from uninstalled software, failed file operations, and manual cleanup that removed files but left the directory structure behind. FolderSizes can find them quickly.

How it works:

• Create a folder search rule that matches folders with zero files and zero subfolders
• Add an exclusion rule for hidden and system folders to avoid matching OS directories that are intentionally empty
• Run the search across one or more drives

The included “Find Empty Folders” sample search is preconfigured with these rules and ready to run.

Why empty folders matter:

• File server hygiene — Thousands of empty folders make shared drives harder to navigate and confuse users
• Backup efficiency — Some backup solutions enumerate empty directories unnecessarily
• Migration preparation — Clean up empty directories before migrating to new storage to avoid transferring clutter

Windows traditionally limits file paths to 260 characters (MAX_PATH). Files with longer paths can cause problems with backup tools, sync software, file management scripts, and some applications. FolderSizes search can find them.

Setting up a path length search:

• Add a file name length rule
• Enable the “compare full paths” option to measure the entire path, not just the file name
• Set the operator to greater than and the threshold to 255 characters (or whatever limit is relevant to your tools)
• Add both a file rule and a folder rule to catch long paths at either level

The included “Find Long File and Folder Paths” sample search includes both file and folder rules preconfigured with a 255-character threshold.

When to use this:

• Before migrations — Identify paths that might fail during copy operations
• Troubleshooting backup failures — Long paths are a common cause of backup errors that can go unnoticed
• OneDrive / SharePoint sync — Cloud sync tools often have stricter path length limits than NTFS
• Cross-platform compatibility — Linux and macOS have different path length behaviors

Folders with thousands of files in a single directory can cause performance problems — slow Explorer browsing, sluggish backup operations, and poor application responsiveness. FolderSizes search can identify these hot spots.

Setting up the search:

• Add a folder search rule with a file count criterion
• Set the operator to greater than and specify the threshold (e.g., 500 or 1,000 immediate files)
• Choose whether to count immediate files (direct children only) or total files (recursive)

The included “Find Folders With Many Files” sample search looks for folders containing more than 500 immediate files.

Common culprits:

• Log directories — Applications writing thousands of individual log files
• Temp folders — Accumulated temporary files never cleaned up
• Flat dump folders — Users saving everything into a single “Downloads” or “Documents” folder
• Application caches — Browser caches, thumbnail caches, or build artifact directories

Files without extensions can be problematic — Windows doesn't know how to open them, they may be misidentified by backup and antivirus tools, and they often indicate incomplete downloads, corrupted data, or application artifacts.

How FolderSizes finds them:

• Create a search rule that excludes files matching *.* (any file with a dot in the name)
• What remains are files with no extension at all

The included “Find Files Without Extensions” sample search uses exactly this approach.

Why this matters:

• Data classification — Files without extensions can't be categorized by type, which affects storage reports and policies
• Security review — Extensionless files on a server may warrant investigation — they could be renamed executables or data files that don't conform to naming standards
• Cleanup — Often these are orphaned temp files, incomplete downloads, or application lock files that can be safely removed

FolderSizes search includes a file owner criterion that queries NTFS ownership information — the account recorded as the owner of each file on disk.

Setting up an owner search:

• Add a file owner rule to your search
• Specify the owner pattern — for example, DOMAIN\jsmith for a specific user, or DOMAIN\* for all domain accounts
• The owner field supports wildcard matching for flexible queries

Practical applications:

• Offboarding — When an employee leaves, find all files they own on shared storage to reassign or archive
• Storage chargeback — Identify exactly how much space a specific user or service account is consuming
• Orphaned data — Find files owned by deleted accounts that no longer exist in Active Directory
• Policy enforcement — Combine owner search with file type or size criteria — for example, find all video files owned by a specific user

Yes. FolderSizes 10 introduces property-based search, which queries the Windows Property System (IPropertyStore) to match files based on embedded metadata — the same properties visible in a file's Details tab in Windows Explorer.

Searchable properties include:

• System.Author — Document author (Word, Excel, PDF, PowerPoint, etc.)
• System.Title — Document title
• System.Subject — Document subject
• System.Keywords — Tags and keywords embedded in documents
• System.Comment — File comments
• System.Company — Company name (common in Office documents and executables)
• System.Music.Artist — Music file artist
• System.Photo.CameraManufacturer — Camera make for photos
• Any Windows shell property with a canonical name

Matching options:

• Contains — Property value contains the search text (case-insensitive)
• Equals — Exact match
• Starts with / Ends with — Prefix or suffix matching
• Regular expression — Full regex support for complex patterns

Example use cases:

• “Find all Word documents authored by John Smith” — match System.Author contains “John Smith”
• “Find all files with 'Confidential' in the title” — match System.Title contains “Confidential”
• “Find photos taken with a Canon camera” — match System.Photo.CameraManufacturer contains “Canon”
• “Find all executables published by a specific company” — match System.Company with the company name

Property criteria can be combined with all other search rules (size, date, name pattern, owner, attributes) for precise, multi-dimensional queries.

Yes. FolderSizes search uses a rule-based system where you can stack multiple criteria and choose how they interact.

How rules work:

• Each search can contain multiple rules, and each rule defines a set of matching criteria
• Rules can be set to include (match files that meet the criteria) or exclude (skip files that meet the criteria)
• Rules can target files, folders, or both — independently
• Within a rule, you can set criteria for name, size, date, attributes, owner, path length, file count, subfolder count, and document properties

Example: a multi-rule search

• Rule 1 (include): Match document files (*.doc;*.docx;*.pdf;*.xls;*.xlsx) created in the last 30 days
• Rule 2 (exclude): Skip hidden and system files
• Rule 3 (exclude): Skip hidden and system folders

This finds recently created business documents while filtering out OS noise.

Saving and reusing searches:

• Search configurations can be saved to XML files and loaded later
• FolderSizes ships with several sample search files that demonstrate common patterns
• Saved searches can be scheduled to run automatically and emailed as reports
• Share search files with your team to standardize common queries across your organization

Yes. FolderSizes search works on local drives, mapped network drives, and UNC paths. You can specify multiple search locations and search across all of them simultaneously.

Supported search locations:

• Local drives — C:\, D:\, or any local volume
• Mapped network drives — Z:\, Y:\, or any mapped drive letter
• UNC paths — \\server\share or \\server\share\subfolder
• Multiple locations at once — Search across several drives and shares in a single operation

Network search considerations:

• Owner information — File owner lookups work on network NTFS shares but may require appropriate permissions
• Property search — Document property queries (author, title, etc.) work on network files but are slower than local searches due to the per-file metadata retrieval over the network
• Performance — Network searches are inherently slower than local searches due to network latency, but FolderSizes' multi-threaded engine helps maximize throughput

FolderSizes search can match files based on their Windows file attributes, either as the primary search criterion or combined with other rules.

Supported attributes:

• Hidden — Files not visible in default Explorer views
• System — Operating system files
• Read-only — Write-protected files
• Archive — Files flagged for backup
• Compressed — NTFS-compressed files
• Encrypted — EFS-encrypted files

Attribute matching modes:

• Match any — File has at least one of the specified attributes
• Match all — File has all of the specified attributes
• No attribute filter — Ignore attributes (match all files regardless)

Attributes are commonly used in exclusion rules. For example, many of the sample searches include a rule that excludes hidden and system files to avoid matching operating system internals.