11

So this is a case of curiosity more than anything.

I am in the process up loading images for a very large number of collegiate products from a certain vendor. Part of this process includes grabbing the style # and searching for it in the folder that contains all the images. For some reason, this doesn't work when I search for any of the products that end in "R". If I delete the R, the image will show up - and if I replace it with a lower case "r", the product will show up. Using an upper case "R" causes the search to fail again.

Since I know it is happening it isn't really a problem for me, but it is weird. I don't know much about how Windows Explorer handles fonts/characters, so I could begin to speculate what is causing this.

Incidentally, I get the same result if I try to search through the pop-up dialog when I go to upload the image, or if I actually navigate to the folder within Explorer. Either way, the filenames that end in "R" can't be found.

3
  • I cannot recreate this. Please provide an example set of file names and your exact search term.
    – Steven
    Aug 12, 2015 at 15:55
  • 1
    So I am adding a lot of collegiate products, and many of them are Oregon branded. Each of them ends in either OR1 or OR2, such as: JMU1016OR1.jpg JMU1016OR2.jpg In this case, if I search for JMU1016OR, I get "No items match your search". If I delete the "R", I will get all the products that match JMU1016O*, including the two files referenced above. If I then add back "r" to the end of the search term (JMU1016Or) Explorer will return both JMU1016OR1.jpg and JMU1016OR2.jpg. If I then replace the "r" with "R", I get no matches. It's very odd, and I can't imagine what is causing it.
    – seerauber
    Aug 12, 2015 at 16:21
  • 1
    Upon further investigation, the issue only arises when the file names contain a number, and as you mentioned only for the letter R. Odd.
    – Steven
    Aug 12, 2015 at 16:33

1 Answer 1

12

As a workaround, search using lowercase.

You may have stumbled upon a Windows Search bug. Explorer appears to interpret the OR within the search term as the OR operator (even though it doesn't have spaces around it).

The same behavior also happens with NOT and AND in the search term.

Advanced tips for searching in Windows

Adding operators

One way to refine a search is to use the operators AND, OR, and NOT. When you use these operators, you need to type them in all capital letters.

1
  • 1
    That makes sense. I bet you are right - thanks for looking into it! I'll count this as mystery solved.
    – seerauber
    Aug 12, 2015 at 16:51

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .