Still searching……….?

I got quite a few positive comments about my last post which talked about ways to find temporarily misplaced files. My suspicions were correct that you’re pretty much like me and from time to time you have trouble locating something that you’re quite sure is somewhere on your computer. Today I’ve got another tool to tell you about, just in case last week’s list didn’t give you everything you need.

Once you’ve narrowed down your searching to a list of files that’s smaller than the entire universe of data that lives on your computer, you’re pretty much stuck with opening up your files with the program that created them, and looking at them one at a time. And that can take a lot of time if you have a lot of files.

Or so you thought.

But last year I found a free program that said it would let me peek inside my files without actually opening them. This sounded like a great new way to save time, especially considering the fact that I’d been unsuccessfully searching for a file that my son had created for me a couple of months earlier. More details about that later. First let me tell you where to get the program and how to use it.

It’s called Universal Viewer and the basic download will let you peek into your text, image, multimedia, and HTML files. Click on the Installer link listed under the free version heading and choose save to download the file to your computer. (Virus check it to make sure it’s clean before you install it)

The easiest way to get started using Universal Viewer is to highlight a file you want to look at, right click to bring up your options menu, then click on the words Universal Viewer. Presto. You’ll be looking at the contents inside your file. Universal Viewer works quickly with sets of files that you have in folders. To easily go through all the files in a folder, use the forward and backward navigation arrows.

Back to my original problem. I’d tried finding my file by looking for it myself, manually. I’d tried the Windows search function with advanced options, including a word I thought was in the file name and the approximate date range I thought it was created. No luck.

After I installed Universal Viewer, I searched again for all graphics files that had been modified during the past three months. There were 2486 files found. I can only imagine how long it would have taken me to open up my graphics programs and then open up the files one at a time.

Instead, I used Universal Viewer to peek into the most likely folders, and in less than 30 seconds, I found what I was looking for. Quite impressive.

If you have other types of files like Word, Excel, or Open Office which you’d like to peek at, check here for other plug-ins.

You might not need to use this program frequently, but it’s a great addition to have in your toolbox just in case.

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Sheryl Schuff is a Certified Public Accountant and founder of the Business Startup Success Club. She specializes in consulting with solopreneurs about business formation, taxes, recordkeeping, and technology.