Today I was going though old data trying to find a file. I don't know the filename. It was actually one of a set of 2 txt files. I thought I had it in my profile folder from my last computer somewhere.
After several unsuccesful attempts at finding it I decided tto use flat file no folders on my profile folder then use the extension filter to limit the results to .txt.
What I never expected in a million years was the list of extensions I was shown. There must be hundreds of extensions that aren't even displayed but no way to traverse them. I'm not sure what your thought's are on this but seems like it needs a scrolling capability. I can work around it using the box on the filter bar for this particular problem but if I didn't know what extensions I might want to see it would be a problem.
I'm not sure the menu is that useful once you have that many extensions in the list. Why not just type the extension you want?
Using Tools > Find Files to search for *.txt under the folder would also be much quicker than turning on Flat View and then filtering the huge list afterwards.
Like I said in my case it's not an issue because it's one known extension.
It's hard to say in what situation it may be useful to see all of them. I was surprised to see such random extensions.
The search issue becomes a problem of following links especially in the profile folder. I've had to do this before and the data get's to overwhelming and trying to bypass the links takes hours of time and lord help you if you accidentally hit back or something and you lose your results.
I just never looked at extensions in my profile folder. They may well be legit it was just surprising because you use certain apps and you save files with certain extensions but obviously what's happening with temp files and such we don't really know.
It only shows the extensions that are in use. It isn't just making up a huge list of random extensions.
If your profile folder is anything like mine, it will have about 50,000 folders and 350,000 files below it, most of which are automatically created by other software (i.e. it is a complete mess!). It doesn't really make sense to be using it as a starting point for Flat View and filtering within it via a list of extensions. Using Find Files instead, or choosing a lower starting point for Flat View (e.g. the Documents folder) is what I would do.
I appreciate the ideas but these were files I created using a text editor to keep track of file encryption information. I can't imagine what happened to them because I keep my profile data on a seperate device for ease of upgrading computers and not getting clobbered by bad Window's updates.
Unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to find the files. it's not the first time I've looked for them but I came across one of them in an older backup the other day and thought maybe I had found a clue. I was fairly sure they were in the high-level user folder but yet not there. But at one point I had copied them into the system folder but they don't seem to be there either.
I also had the access info stored in Roboform at one point. The only password manager that I could find at the time that keep track of local passwords not just internet related. Maybe somehow I can restore that data? That's a bit more challenging because there may have been program updates that make old data inaccessible, etc. and do I even have a backup of the Roboform folders?
Many programs don't save user created files in the Documents folder. I have programs that save things into AppData further nested into folders under the company name and program name or just program name. I also have programs that save directly in the top level user folder with no sub-folder and some save directly to various cloud locations. It's all very random.
To make it more messy they keep internet caches in your user profile thousands upon thousands of tiny files. No it shouldn't be this disorganized but then how many times has MS moved the user profile folder? Maybe over time I can reorganize it but some programs can be very obstenate. I have one program that overwrites a junction rather rhan following the link. I've changed it to a symbolic link and that seems to help but still it can occassionally get clobbered by an update. I created the link to protect the very data that's updated all day long.
The find function in DO hasn't been the most cooperative in these folders that have junctions, symbolic links to other devices that you try to exclude. It can take hours to process. I think the last time I tried it was still running a day later. I'm guessing because like most everything it doesn't handle the exclusions well.
Wild guess : have you tried something like "Everything" ? (see. https://www.voidtools.com/ and Searching - voidtools)
Because, I agree with Leo, if you search a file which name you don't know that is burried somewhere in one subfolder (which you don't know the name) of your appdata folder, it could really take a while to find it as there are so many files in there !
Everything indexes filenames (and properties), it will pop up faster depending on what you search : for instance, in the search window if you type a path (your appdata folder) and *.txt, it will show you every .txt file within the folder and its subfolders. you can also try 'doc:' instead of '.txt', it will broaden the file types returned, and all that with an updated list within a second (once indexed).
