Searching for Hidden Files

Searching for a File Type

Make use of the file format search available in Google, Yahoo, Live and Exalead. The following tells you how to search for specific file formats, such as PowerPoint (ppt) presentations; Adobe PDF for government and private industry documents; xls for Excel spreadsheets containing lists, statistical, and accounting data; and rss or xml to locate RSS feeds.

Google

As an example, filetype:xls. This will find find all files with the extension, xls. An example would be, “site:microsoft.com filetype:xls“.

The most common file types searched for on Google are:

• Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf)
• Adobe PostScript (ps)
• Lotus 1-2-3 (wk1, wk2, wk3, wk4, wk5, wki, wks, wku)
• Lotus WordPro (lwp)
• MacWrite (mw)
• Microsoft Excel (xls)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (ppt)
• Microsoft Word (doc)
• Microsoft Works (wks, wps, wdb)
• Microsoft Write (wri)
• Rich Text Format (rtf)
• Shockwave Flash (swf)
• Text (ans, txt)

Google will find more file types, but I wouldn’t rely solely on this search method if the file type is not in the above list. Of course you will notice that the filetype: operator does not find image files.

Yahoo

In Yahoo the operator is “originurlextension:“. An example would be, “site: microsoft.com com originurlextension:doc“.

Currently supported formats are:

• .htm, .html—Standard HTML
• .pdf—Adobe PDF
• .xls—Microsoft Excel
• .ppt—Microsoft PowerPoint
• .doc—Microsoft Word
• .xml, .rdf, .rss—RSS or XML feeds
• .txt—Plain Text Format

Live

In Live, the operator is “filetype:“. An example would be, “site:microsoft.com filetype:pdf“.

Another operator that may assist you to locate files is “contains:” which restricts results to sites that have links to the file type(s) you specify. For example, to search for websites that contain links to Microsoft Windows Media Audio (wma) files, type contains:wma. For example, “site:microsoft.com contains:wma“.

Exalead

In Exalead the operator is “filetype:“. I have no idea what types of files this search engine recognizes when using this operator.