Hi, am looking for tips for duplicate file/folder search, for a partial match (when filesize is different for files) e.g.
"xxxx name yyyy"
"aaaa name bbbb"
So I'm looking for any instances (file or folder) where there is a duplicate of "name" that may have different things as a prefix or suffix.
Oh yes did I mention I don't know the name, am just looking for duplicate names amongst thousands of files & folders. So pretty much exactly the same as the current duplicate file finder but a searching for partial filename matches. The filesize will be different.
So... any name, prefix, suffix, filesize...?
That's going to be a long list 
No just duplicate names. There's probably less than 100 in the 1000s of files/folders. But I don't want to go through looking manually.
If these were your files,
bar file4.txt
file0.txt
file1.txt
file2.txt
file3.txt
file4 foo.txt
file4.txt
file5.txt
file6.txt
file7.txt
file8.txt
file9.txt
the search should return
bar file4.txt
file4 foo.txt
file4.txt
How many files/folders do you need to search?
Hi, if that were the file list then I would want all them returned in the result due to "file" being repeated.
But realistically the file list would be similar to:
20030812johnk.123
20050615marym.123
jamest20060302.123
susanh20010302.123
timr20060102.123
20110202jamest.123
I'd want the results to be
jamest20060302.123
20110202jamest.123
I have about 6TB to search and a few thousand files.
Why are
20030812johnk.123
jamest20060302.123
20110202jamest.123
not duplicates? They all contain a j.
Why not the whole list? All files contain a 0.
It will be a long search if you want to go through a few thousand files and check if any of its substrings are contained in the rest.
Could you limit the search to whole words/letters/digits? That'd help.
yes this is what i'd want
So for the example above we'd launch dup searches for
johnk
marym
jamest
jamest
susanh
timr
I wanted to do something similar in this thread Finding duplicate files where first 20 characters are the same and so could I suggest an evaluator column might do the job nicely. I did a quick test with this column
and created a couple of files with 'sometext' in the name and this is the result from a duplicate file search
Hope this helps.
Necro'ing this thread from oct 2024, now February 25, 2026 . .
I have a similar question.
I'd like a more "loose" duplicate finder search, so that anything with the same name shows up and without having to input any name into the search field, only specifying extension.
For example, I'd like a generic search to be able to show me results like these all in one search, without having to specify the root word. A search for "all similar names" so to speak, so I can see which are duplicates even without the same name, and so I can see if similar names exist in different locations. Searching each name separately would take way too long, I'd like to be able to just find similar file names, of various "root" names, intelligently, all at once in a single search on multiple drives at the same time.
A.bird.in.flight.jpg
a.bird.in.flight.from.the.nest.jpg
fish-at-night_swimming.jpg
fish_at_night-swimming.jpg
dog-training-2001.jpg
dogtraining-revisted.jpg
dog-the-wonder-dog-1.jpg
..
Thanks in advance for any help.
Did some digging in the duplicate file finder interface and found this window popup for extended options, so I checked the two relevant ones. Looks promising.
any word option might be overkill. I'll try partial match 
Still not getting the result I wanted, because even that filter, at least as it stands without me editing it more somehow, seems based on exact strings of a root word, where I want all files with the word "dog" AND all the files with the word "bird" for example to show up. To be clear, I don't want to put any word in the search, I want all similar "topic" files to show up from a search automatically, grouped as "similars". As it is, it's only showing me exact duplicates when the search "seed" is blank.
I could try "any word" but then things like "A." or "the." would show up too much as "similars". Is there any way to omit super common words in order to get the kind of result I want from setting the filter to "any word" (as in , any word except these very common I specify) ?
e.g. The words "the," "and," and "of," and "a" belong to two main grammatical categories:
articles and conjunctions/prepositions
You could make an evaluator column that modifies the filenames however you want (e.g. removing certain words, all punctuation, spaces etc.) and then set that as the comparison criteria.
Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, I can do that with opus or bulk rename utility. The problem I have is that so far, whatever I do, there doesn't seem to be a way to make a loose search for "similars" without providing a seed word for the search. I just want opus to search my drives for anything with the word dog, bird, cat, mouse and show all of those files grouped together, as well as other word categories.
My hope was for something like this:
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Similars Search Result (no input searchword seed, set to "any word" -* a , - at , - the , - of *) :
(Bird)
birdhouse.jpg
bird-toy.jpg
birdfood.jpg
(Cat)
cattree.jpg
cat-toy.jpg
catbox.jpg
catfood.jpg
cat-coat.jpg
cat-5_cables.jpg
cat-xmas_1.jpg
(Coat)
mycoats.jpg
my-grey-coat-1.jpg
dog-coat.jpg
cat-coat.jpg
xmas-present_coat.jpg
(Dog)
doghouse.jpg
dogtoy.jpg
dogleash.jpg
dog-food.jpg
dog-coat.jpg
dog-xmas_1.jpg
(Food)
dog-food.jpg
catfood.jpg
birdfood.jpg
(House)
doghouse.jpg
birdhouse.jpg
myhouse.jpg
(Toy)
dogtoy.jpg
cat-toy.jpg
bird-toy.jpg
powertoys.jpg
(xmas)
cat-xmas_1.jpg
xmas-present_coat.jpg
dog-xmas_1.jpg
xmas-dinner_2.jpg
xmas-present_coat.jpg
Files can't appear in multiple groups, unfortunately.
I appreciate the feedback ~ follow up.
Still, it would be nice if some code could scrape and find the results like that, even if just a results dump readout, exportable text file that was inoperable, but showed the file locations. I didn't put directories in my hypothetical example but that was the idea.
Edit: A google search gave me some suggestions which might work. I'll check them out eventually. It's just nice when opus does so many things that are functions built into the suite rather than 3rd party. The searches it does are great, but I guess it doesn't have a "fuzzy" search feature like I am seeking.
. . . google suggestions . . .
dupeGuru: Free and open-source, it excels at finding similar filenames (even with typos or slightly different naming conventions) and allows customizing search criteria. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
AllDup: Highly versatile for finding duplicates on multiple drives or network shares. It offers options to search for similar file names, file extensions, and sizes.
UltraFinder: A robust tool that supports searching multiple drives, filtering by extension, and finding partial/similar name matches.
Puran Duplicate File Finder: A fast, free tool that can scan multiple drives and allows for specific file-type filtering.
Czkawka: A fast, multi-functional tool designed to find duplicates, including by name, on large drives.
Key Features to Look For
Fuzzy Matching: Allows searching for "similar" titles (e.g., Image-01.jpg and Image01_final.jpg) rather than exact matches.
Filter by Extension: Limits results to specific file types (e.g., .txt, .mp4) to narrow down results.
Multi-Drive Scan: Capability to add multiple drives or folders in one scanning session.
