Search for files with NOT attribute

Question

I was a long time user of FileLocator Pro 6 and loved the small "NOT" tickbox that told the app to exclude particular conditions from the search and include all others. In the 7th version it's gone and I've became a bit helpless.

What I want to do is simple - I want to find all FILES with extensions different than I specify, let's say all files in a folder that have different extensions than avi, mp4 and mkv. Previously I just put those extensions into search field, chose "files only" and ticked "NOT" - but what should I do now?

I tried DOS expression - NOT:*.avi,*.mp4,*.mkv but it didn't work.

Can anyone help me with that?

Answer 1

A comma is a valid file name character so try using a semi-colon to separate the files instead, e.g.

NOT:*.avi;*.mp4;*.mkv

This will show all files AND folders that do not match the expression. If you only want files you have two options:

Use attributes

Go to the attributes tab and set the Folder attributes to Off

OR,

Use the File name preset

You could change the expression type from DOS Expression to Files Only, but this also requires changing the actual expression. When you use a File name presets the expression type defaults to Boolean. So you would need to change the expression to something like

NOT (.avi OR .mp4 OR .mkv)

or you can even stick with your original DOS Expression using the DOSEX operator, e.g.

DOSEX "NOT:*.avi;*.mp4;*.mkv"

Comments

Thanks! That helped!

But how to exclude folders from the search?
When I select "Files only" from the drop-down list, the DOS expression don't work...

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OK - I got that - I just changed the folder attribute to NO!

Sorry for spamming...

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That's a good point. I'll update the answer for this situation.