Find files by date modified in Windows

Using the date modified feature in the Windows File Explorer lets you find any files that were modified on a specific date or over a range of dates. Using this tip is helpful for anyone who lost a file but knows when they last made edits.

How to find the date of modified files

1. Press the Windows key+E on the keyboard to open File Explorer.
2. On the left side-scrolling menu, select the drive or folder that you want to view the last modified date(s) (A) for the contents.

3. On the right side of the screen, type datemodified: (make sure to include the colon) in the search box (B).

4. Once done, all the current drive/folder contents are sorted by the last modified date, from most recent to oldest.
5. After typing "datemodified:" in the search box, click the Date Modified button (A) in the top-center menu to select a range of dates (B).

Find files by specific date or date range

To find files modified on a specific date or between two dates, add a date or date range in step 3 above. For example, you can type the following to find files modified on a specific date.

datemodified:1/15/2022

In the example search string above, the search results would show any files modified on January 15, 2022. Enter any date after datemodified: using the mm/dd/yyyy format to search for any files modified on the desired date.

To find files modified between two dates, you can type the following.

datemodified:1/1/2022 .. 2/1/2022

In this example, any files modified between January 1, 2022, and February 1, 2022, are displayed in the search results. Enter any two dates after datemodified: using the mm/dd/yyyy format, separated by a space, two periods, and another space, to find files modified in a specific date range.