Almost week back we wrote a post explaining how to search for files before a specified date in Windows 7. Today we are going to cover it in a bit more details. What if you want to search for files that are newer than a defined date? Windows 7 advanced search can help us narrow down the search both quickly and easily.

There are two parts, you can either search by file date or file size. Both are helpful in narrowing down to the exact files that are needed. What most users don’t know is that you can use less-than(<) or greater than(>) signs in Windows Explorer Search.

Search By Date

To search between any two dates, click the first date and drag the mouse to the second date. It will become:

datemodified:[first date] .. [second date]

To search for files before or after a specific date, use the operators < or > before the date. They will become:

datemodified:<[date] (To search for files before a date)

datemodified:>[date] (To search for files after a date)

where [date] is any date. Note that there should be no spaces between operators, signs, and the date.

Search By File Size

By default it will show you a list of choices to choose from but sadly there is no way to customize these choices. It might require hacking of registry.

To search for files that are greater or less than a file size, we will put < and > before the file size. They will become:

size:<100MB (Search for all files that are less than 100MB)

size:>100MB (Search for all files that are greater than 100MB)

you can use either KB, MB, or GB. You can also use decimals, such as, 1.5MB.

The above mentioned search operators can be used in Windows Vista as well. I am not sure if they would work with Windows XP too.

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