topic Re: Windows 11 Search bar in Tech Help - Software/Hardware etc

Windows 11 Search bar

Mav — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 19:12:54 GMT

I'm struggling to search two drives with many varied files to find all videos but not folders or photos. Good info on achieving this is hard-to-come-by.

So far I have tried;

(NOT kind:folder AND NOT kind:pic) (path: h:*) OR (path: i:*)

kind:NOT folder AND (kind:video OR kind:pics AND (path: h:*) OR (path: i:*))
kind:NOT folder AND (kind:video AND kind:NOT pics (path: h:*) OR (path: i:*))

Using kind:NOT folder AND (kind:video OR kind:pics AND (path: h:*) OR (path: i:*) does as expected by finding all videos and photos in drives I and H but now I want to exclude all photos.

I have also tried with various use of brackets to no avail.

Any help really appreciated, thanks.

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Penny — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 20:12:16 GMT

@Mav wrote:

I'm struggling to search two drives with many varied files to find all videos but not folders or photos.

... Using kind:NOT folder AND (kind:video OR kind:pics AND (path: h:*) OR (path: i:*) does as expected by finding all videos and photos in drives I and H but now I want to exclude all photos.

I have also tried with various use of brackets to no avail.

Not an expert in such things (as you know!) but if I was searching for something I'd be inclined to identify the likely file-formats of video files and create the search on that basis (so you're searching for specifics rather than having to exclude other files).

Just did a search for 'video file suffixes' at duckduckgo and got the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_file_format which lists a surprising number of potential suffixes. The only one I've ever used is .mp4 (recording down stuff with obs studio) but even if you have a wide variety of suffixes it should (I'd have thought) be relatively easy to list them within your search term.

I've never used sophisticated search formats such as those you mentioned (usually just *.php or *.xls or whatever, on the C drive) but hopefully it would be straightforward to create the requisite search (like your one above) just for the identified specifics.

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Mav — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 21:44:35 GMT

Thanks @Penny,

From my understanding using kind:video will look for all known video types so no suffixes needed.

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Penny — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 21:57:40 GMT

@Mav wrote:

From my understanding using kind:video will look for all known video types so no suffixes needed.

Didn't know that. Still learning as I go

... so something like kind:video AND (path: h:*) OR (path: i:*) would/should work (?)

Oh wow. Just tried that in Windows Explorer (have two external drives F+G for the .mp4 files) and it listed all of them.

Windows 10 here, mind you, but don't see any reason why that search shouldn't work on Windows 11 (?)

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Mav — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 22:06:04 GMT

Excellent result but not happening like that here.

But finally solved it by putting the paths before the kind;

(path: h:\*) OR (path: i:\*) kind:videos

Both h and I drives are external.

There's more information here but does tend to lack decent examples.

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Penny — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 13:00:15 GMT

@Mav wrote:

Excellent result but not happening like that here.

But finally solved it by putting the paths before the kind;

(path: h:\*) OR (path: i:\*) kind:videos

@Mav Interesting that the kind:video AND (path: h:*) OR (path: i:*) didn't work for you.

... in point of fact, I discovered after having posted message #4 above, that the search had also brought up other results including an .exe and a .pdf 😕 Didn't feel inclined to muddy the waters by disclosing that at the time, so waited to see how the thread progressed.

Today after having read what you'd posted above, it occurred to me that [usually] I would have 'grouped' the external-hard-drive options with a further bracket, as with kind:video AND ((path: h:*) OR (path: i:*)).

Just tried that with F and G (the two relevant external hard-drives here) and it listed all the .mp4 files on both drives

... ie no other non-video files.

Just tried what you used - (path: F:\*) OR (path: G:\*) kind:videos - and got the same output as with

kind:video AND ((path: F:*) OR (path: G:*)) as above.

Only thing I *would* say, though, is that Windows Explorer "kept looking" (for over a minute), even after it had retrieved all the files. Just tried *.mp4 AND ((path: F:*) OR (path: G:*)) and same outcome.

However just using search for (say) *.mp4 on drive F - instant result. So I'd be inclined to use a more-straightforward search wherever possible, I guess.

Still not entirely sure why (path: F:\*) OR (path: G:\*) kind:videos [ie kind:video at end] would work (to select only the video files) without brackets around the pathF-or-pathG stuff, yet kind:video AND (path: F:*) OR (path: G:*) did not.

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Mav — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 18:30:14 GMT

The search can be very quick if just on one drive.

Like you one of my searches, can't remember which, kept including just two video files from the J drive on which are over 5700 video files.

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Townman — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 12:43:20 GMT

@Mav

Hi Mike,

Looking at the above, I think that there could be some syntax ambiguity.

I did a search using kind:videos and ((path: c:*) OR (path: d:*))

Note the extra () seeking to remove AND and OR logic precedence ambiguity...

A and B or C
A and (B or C)
(A and B) or C

What I got was a list of video files having the word AND in the file name, as in

"C:\Users\kevin\OneDrive\Documents\Daresbury\Promotional materials\2024 Watch and Pray\Digital Media\2024 Watch and Pray digital advertising - Mothering Sunday and Quiz.mp4"

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Mav — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 14:35:38 GMT

@Townman

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what your point is but the operands such as AND, OR, etc must be in capitals otherwise it will search for the word "and".

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Townman — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 15:06:12 GMT

@Mav

Hi Mike,

Thank you for that clarification ... case sensitive operators, must have been written by a Unix coder!!!

I might have got confused by your search terms and those mentioned by Penny, which might have been open to ambiguous logical operator priority without the addition of () around the OR relationship.

I suspect that the kind: after the OR works because in straight left to right priority you get the anticipated selection condition.

Anyhow that's today new trick learnt - I did not know that there is a rich query construct in the file search functionality. I am sure I'll find this helpful when I can next not find a file.

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Mav — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 21:20:43 GMT

Over the last few years with up to 15 or so hard drives with a multitude of video and photo files find what I wanted was a pain so the page linked to in message #5 has been helpful.

I've now only got nine discs 3 M.2 NVME discs for system, temporary, etc, two eight terabytes in a RAID 1 configuration and four external 5GB for other backups and films. etc.

All my photos are now backed up to Amazon Photos but am looking for a cheap option for video files as Amazon only offers five GB

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Townman — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 21:58:13 GMT

Two Amazon accounts?

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Mav — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 22:09:27 GMT

That'll only give 10GB storage and with 4K and some 8K videos definitely not enough.

Re: Windows 11 Search bar

Townman — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 22:57:44 GMT

Any of these any help…

https://www.playbook.com/pricing/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=videocollab&utm_term=send+large+files+fast

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/broadband-and-tv/free-online-storage/

https://degoo.com/techradar - 20GB free