9th May 2000
Coming from the "The Find is a Terrible Thing to Waste" department, Lockergnomie Russ Phillips came up with a quick, slick click trick. Let's say you have more than a few files filling up folders. For example, 'DIR' files. You may wish to get rid of all of those sitting within a certain folder (and each nested folder). Simple: select a starting folder, open it, then tap the 'F3' key to bring up the Find applet. Narrow your search by using a wildcard: "*.DIR" (without the quotes). In that window, a list will begin forming. You may select all (or some) then hit the 'Delete' key. Or, to put a non-destructive spin on this, since the Windows Explorer doesn't have a file exclusion feature, Find makes a fine stand-in. View all bitmaps by searching for *.BMP files within a folder; see every program by pulling up *.EXE files. This is a 'duh' tip, but it's an excellent workaround for a known Explorer inadequacy.