Windows – How to make Windows 10 Start Menu search find anything *containing* the search term (like Windows 7 did)

start-menuwindowswindows 10windows-search

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.
start menu search showing zero results

On the other hand, if I enter wind, it immediately finds what I'm looking for, presumably because WinDirStat starts with WinD.
start menu search showing what I was looking for

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:

  • Using Search from the Desktop, wildcards (* and ?) are ignored, as you've documented. Searches for 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.]

Desktop Search ignoring wild card, *

  • Using Windows Explorer Search, there is no "automatic wild-card" at the beginning, so Search on dirstat fails:

Explorer Search without wild-card

  • Using Windows Explorer Search, by adding the wild-card * at the beginning, Search on dirstat succeeds:

Explorer Search using * wild-card

  • Finally, as you state, using Classic Shell, or its successor, Open-Shell-Menu, Desktop Search behaves as if it were using the Cortana index and as if the search term were preceded and followed by wild-cards, instantly returning a result:

Desktop Search using Classic Shell

You have at least two choices, then:

  1. Use Windows Explorer to search, and precede the term with an asterisk.
  2. Use an add-on, such as Classic Shell, which provides the old functionality (though I do understand you do not want to try that).
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