You can find any file on your computer using MS-DOS providing you know the name of the file or the program that created the file.

If you are unsure where the file may be on the computer, you must be at the root directory of the computer. Meaning, you must be at C:> to get to this prompt, type the following command.

cd\

Once at the root directory or the directory you believe the file to be in, type any of the following commands.

If, for example, you knew that the file had bob somewhere in the file, you would type:

dir bob.* /s

The above example uses wildcards (the asterisks). Also, it uses the /s command switch to tell the dir command to search the current directory, and all its subdirectories.

If you cannot recall any of the names of the files but recall that they were created in Microsoft Excel you could, for example, type:

dir *.xls /s

In the example above, knowing Excel files often end with the .xls file extension, we use the wild character, telling the computer to search for any file ending with the .xls extension. If you don’t know extension of your file, you can find a listing of most extensions and the associated program on our MS-DOS extensions page.

Finally, once you have found the file, you must interpret the output of your search and be able to change directories to get to that file.

  • How to change a directory or open a folder.

Below is an example of the results found when typing dir bob.* /s as mentioned in an earlier example.

Volume in drive C has no label Volume Serial Number is 214B-1DE8 Directory of C:\Computer Hope\Info\Files GENMSBOB HTM 2,592 12-19-96 7:01p genmsbob.htm 1 file(s) 2,592 bytes Directory of C:\Games\chessmaster\Personalities BOBO CMX 2,584 09-10-99 1:00a BoBo.CMX 1 file(s) 2,584 bytes Directory of C:\Games\Quake 2\baseq2\players1\Morbo MORBOB~1 PCX 25,798 01-09-98 4:24a morboBASE.pcx 1 file(s) 25,798 bytes Directory of C:\Windows MYBOB TXT 4 11-19-00 3:23p mybob.txt 1 file(s) 4 bytes Total files listed: 4 file(s) 30,978 bytes 1 dir(s) 29,500.53 MB free

As you can see in the above example, several files were found that contain bob. If you receive more than expected results, you may need to type /p after the command. Using /p displays the results one page at a time. If, for example, the file we were looking for was mybob.txt, looking above, we see that this file is in the C:\Windows directory.

  • How to find a file on a computer.
  • See the cd command and dir command pages for further information on these commands.
  • Computer file extensions and related information.
  • Information on long file names.
  • MS-DOS and Windows command line help and support.