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Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit:

I'm looking for a way to find all the files in a directory that are NOT of a specific file type or extension.

Example: I'd like to find every file that isn't an .mp3 in my music folder (and all sub folders).

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7 Answers 7

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type this in the search box of the directory you want to search

NOT *.mp3
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  • How to make this work in windows XP?
    – Pacerier
    Aug 27, 2014 at 13:14
  • 6
    This was new to me, but brilliant! After testing it, I want to add you can do multiples, such as NOT *.mp3, NOT *.aiff, etc. You can even do "NOT folder" to exclude folders.
    – Jeff
    Jul 17, 2015 at 20:01
  • But how to add several NOT conditions to a file type:folder search? Question here: superuser.com/questions/1001163/…
    – JinSnow
    Nov 16, 2015 at 7:30
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    Old thread, but there was a question to be answered. @Guillaume You can chain AND NOT after your initial arguments.
    – avluis
    Feb 27, 2017 at 8:32
  • Can you do this for multiple extensions? Something like NOT (*.mp3 AND *.wav)
    – Cornelius
    Jan 11, 2022 at 7:36
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From a command prompt you can pipe the direcotry list into findstr, and use findstr's V switch to exclude lines like the filter (in this case, lines ending in .mp3), as well as the I switch to make the find procedure case-insensitive.

dir | findstr /vi "*.mp3"
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I just open the folder with Windows Explorer, add the Type column to the display, and sort on it.

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Step 1: Get FindUtils.
Step 2: find some\dir -type f ! -name *.mp3

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You could try

xcopy /L /EXCLUDE:.mp3 /S DIRNAME .

The /L flag forces xcopy to only list but not copy the /s runs through all subfolders and the exclude misses out mp3s

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For a quick look I sort by clicking on the type column header in Explorer. There is a pull down option to tick boxes for only the files you want listed.

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You can check a mime-type with:

file -i <YourFile> -F "::" | sed 's/.*:: //' | sed 's/;.*//'

and then write a script.

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