On Windows 7: as I remember, the search results included anything that contained your search term.
On Windows 10: it seems, the search results only include items that start with your search term.
Here's an example, trying to open the WinDirStat
program:
When I enter dirst
I would expect it to find windirstat because the .exe contains that search string. But there are no results.
On the other hand, if I enter wind
, it immediately finds what I'm looking for, presumably because WinDirStat
starts with WinD
.
The problem is, I don't always rarely actually remember the full name of what I'm looking for. For example, if I'm looking for Win32DiskImager
, I'm not gonna remember it starts with Win32
. Instead, I'd type image
, in search of "that program I used a year ago to write a disk image to a disk".
Is there a simple fix or workaround for this? All I've found so far are 3rd party programs that change more than just this search behavior (ie ClassicShell). I don't want to change everything, just this search behavior.
Best Answer
In Windows 10, v. 1909. there are apparently different search behaviors:
dirstat
,*dirstat
and*dirstat*
fail. [Others, such as respondent harrymc, have found wild cards do work, but not on the questioner's PC, nor on mine, with Windows 10 v. 1909, OS Build 18363.815.]dirstat
fails:*
at the beginning, Search ondirstat
succeeds:You have at least two choices, then: