7 Free Programs That Instantly Search Files And E-mails On Your PC

Are you looking for a file on your PC’s hard drive? Windows has a built-in Desktop Search that you can use to scan your PC to help you find the file you’re looking for but you can’t just rely on it. Windows Desktop Search is not that advance and I don’t use it often because aside from it’s very slow, it doesn’t really find the files that I’m looking for. The results always turned out to be “Search is complete. There are no results to display”, but when I try to manually scan my files, I can find it.

If you’re also unsatisfied with the Windows Desktop Search, you can try installing third-party software that is more advanced and can find the files on your PC much faster!

Check out these Desktop Search Freewares:

1. Copernic Desktop Search

Copernic Desktop Search (CDS) enables you to instantly search files, e-mails, and e-mail attachments stored anywhere on your PC’s hard drive. The application executes sub second searching of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, Acrobat PDFs, multimedia, and much more!

Features of Copernic Desktop Search:

• Find files instantly (over 150 file types like MP3, JPG, WAV, MPEG, .doc, .ppt, PDF, HTML, ZIP files)
• Find emails or attachments from Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora and Mozilla Thunderbird
• Instantly preview your results
• Optimize your search by refining fields or using advanced search keywords
• Benefit from automatic, seamless real-time indexing of new or updated files and emails
• Search the Web or your computer from the same lightweight, intuitive interface
• Save battery power by suspending the indexing process

* After installing Copernic Desktop Search, initial indexing will begin.

NOTE: In order to search the content of your computer, it requires an initial scan of all your documents. Depending on the number of files stored on your PC, it may take from few minutes to several hours, but it is performed only once. Only then you will be able to experience its full potential.

Download Copernic Desktop Search

2. Google Desktop Search

Google Desktop makes searching your computer as easy as searching the web with Google. It’s a desktop search application that provides full text search over your email, files, music, photos, chats, Gmail, web pages that you’ve viewed, and more. By making your computer searchable, Desktop puts your information easily within your reach and frees you from having to manually organize your files, emails and bookmarks.

Features of Google Desktop:

1. Useful results. Just type the file you are looking for and it will show you the most relevant search results, each of which include the file name and a brief snippet with your search terms highlighted. You can now also preview your Desktop search results right inside the browser

2. Quick search box. If you are in a hurry, you can use the quick search box. Just press “CTRL” button twice to call up the search box and press “CTRL” twice again to hide it.

3. Finding deleted files. Google Desktop creates cached copies (snapshots) of your files and other items each time you view them, and stores these copies on your computer’s hard drive. As a result, you can often use Desktop to find items you accidently deleted.

4. Advanced Search Forms. You can use the Advanced Search to speed up the searching of your files. You can easily specify the type(s) of search you want to do without having to remember specific search operators.

5. Google Desktop can find multiple file types on your computer.

6. Lock Search. If you don’t want others to search the files on your PC, you can activate the Lock Search. Simply click on the Desktop icon in your taskbar and select Lock Search from the menu. To unlock Desktop search, enter the Windows password of the current user on the Desktop home page.

Download Google Desktop for Windows

Download Google Desktop for Linux

Download Google Desktop for Mac

3. InSight Desktop Search

With InSight, you can instantly search for files stored anywhere in your PC’s hard drive. It’s also a digital music jukebox, that features ability to search for music based on information like artist, genre, year, album etc. InSight also brings Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, right to your desktop, allowing you to search and view articles within the application itself. It also automatically updates itself for any changes that might take place on your files.

Download InSight Desktop Search

4. Locate32

Locate32 is software which can be used to find files from your hard drives and other locations. It works like updatedb and locate commands in Unix based systems. In other words, it uses databases to store information about directory structures and uses these databases in searches. The use of these databases provides very fast searching speed. The software includes a dialog based application as well as console programs which can be used to both update and access databases.

Download Locate32

5. Exalead Desktop Free Edition

It gives you the ability to search more than 100 file types, including email messages, email attachments, Office documents, PDFs, images, sound files, video clips and more.

Download Exalead Desktop Free Edition

6. Yahoo! Desktop Search

Features:

• Find anything on your computer
• View results instantaneously – as fast as you can type
• Protect your privacy with easy search controls
• Find information related to your desktop content
• Take action immediately on search results

Download Yahoo! Desktop Search

7. Beagle for Linux

Beagle is a search tool that ransacks your personal information space to find whatever you’re looking for.

Check out the steps that will help you run Beagle on your Linux-based computer.

You may also want to download and install Windows Search 4.0, the latest version of Windows Search for the desktop. It delivers fast search capabilities for files, e-mail, documents, and more, provides performance enhancements and support for enterprise-critical features, and is easy to manage and extend with customized functionality.

Download Windows Search 4.0 (XP/Vista/Windows 7)

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