How to find a folder inside a specific parent folder with Windows 10 search engine without knowing the full path?
I only know that the folder is called Pictures and the parent folder is called Media (full path could be C:\XXXX\XXXX\XXXX\Media\Pictures. Is there anything I can type into the Win10 search engine that retrieves that folder (and any other folder called Media inside a parent folder called Pictures) without knowing the full path of said folder? If I just type "media", search retrieves hundreds of other folders from program files, etc. so I need a better solution.
Edit: Clearer explanation:
I want to use the Windows 10 Search function (next to the start button in the bottom left corner) to quickly find a folder in my computer. That folder is named "Pictures", but so are hundreds of other folders (in my computer). The parent of the folder I'm trying to find is called "Media", but so are hundreds of other folders, too. What I mean with these last 2 sentences is that I can't just type "Pictures" or "Media" on the search bar to retrieve a precise search result. However, the number of folders called "Pictures" whose parent is called "Media" is very low or just 1 (the folder I'm looking for). i.e., I want to find folders with name "A" that verify the condition "have a parent folder named B". In the example, A=Pictures, B=Media. Their path would then be X:\XXXX\XXXX\...\Media\Pictures. Because they have "B\A" in their path, I figured typing "B\A" in the search box would be the most intuitive, but it doesn't work.
3 Answers
Use Windows Explorer to navigate to the parent Pictures folder, so it becomes the
current folder.
Type into the Search box the text : Media kind:folder and pressEnter to search.
Alternatively, you could in the Search Tools pane of Explorer, Refine group,
click Type and choose Folder.
You could also use a more sophisticated search product such as the freeEverything by voidtools.
After the initial indexing, Everything returns answers lightning-fast and as you type.
You could search easily for Media\Pictures. You could also look for
deeper sub-folders by using Media\*\Pictures which will look for
all Pictures anywhere below Media.
Everything also supports Perl regular expressions.
The below PowerShell command will search for all directories with any combination of "Media" & "Pictures" in the path and export the results (Full path of each match) to a file called FileSearch.txt on your desktop.
(gci c:\ -Recurse -Directory | Where {$_.FullName -like "*pictures*" -and $_.FullName -like "*media*"}).FullName > C:\Users\$env:username\desktop\Filesearch.txtDepending on the amount of data you have this could take a while to run.
1If Explorer Search is still working (1909 users have been having issues), the following (tested here) typed in the Search box should work:
path:media\Pictures
