Hard drives are huge these days. We’re busy. Files we’ve saved may be saved to unlikely places. Thank goodness for Windows Find feature.

Start, Find, Files & Folders brings on this dialog box:

On it in the "Named:" field, you can enter the name or part of the name (if you can remember).  Entering do*.doc finds files starting with "do" and ending in ".doc" (Word files).  Entering good*.xls finds files starting with "good" and ending in ".xls" (Excel files )

On this box you can also enter any text you know the document contains in the "Containing text:" field.

The Browse button offers other possible Look in: locations other than searching your entire hard drive.  If you know the file is in a certain folder, you can browse to define that folder as the place to look.

It's a good idea to check the "Include subfolders" to search every part of the Look in: location.

The Date tab allows setting find parameters regarding date(s) associated with files.

After finding files, the dialog box will look similar to this. Notice that right clicking on a found file offers many options.

If the file you're after is not found, consider making the search parameters less precise or broaden the Look in: location.