How to find all photos or all Word documents on your computer

Sometimes you do not remember a file name at all. You just want every photo in one place, or every Word document you have ever written. Both Windows and Mac can do this. You only have to search by file type instead of by name.

This guide shows the way to find all photos on your computer, and all Word documents too, by hand on Windows and on a Mac. After that, it shows how to ask Key to do the same job.

Find all photos on Windows

Windows searches through File Explorer. Its search box understands a few short words, and one of them is kind:. It tells Windows what sort of file you want.

1. Press Windows + E to open File Explorer.
2. In the left column, click This PC. This tells Windows to look across your whole computer and not just one folder.
3. Click the search box at the top right.
4. Type kind:picture and press Enter.
5. Wait a moment. Windows keeps adding results as it finds them, so the list may keep growing for a little while.

You now have one list of every picture Windows can see. That includes JPG, PNG and other common picture formats. To see the pictures larger, click View › Large icons or View › Extra large icons in the toolbar.

Find all Word documents on Windows

Word documents have their own file ending. Newer ones end in .docx and older ones end in .doc. You can search for that ending directly.

1. Open File Explorer and click This PC.
2. Click the search box.
3. Type ext:.docx and press Enter.
4. To catch the older ones too, search again with ext:.doc.

If you would rather see every kind of document, such as Word files, PDFs and text files together, type kind:document instead. The list will be longer, but it is a good way to see everything you have written or saved.

You can also combine a type with a word. For example, kind:picture beach looks for pictures that match the word “beach”.

Windows has a second way to get a smaller, tidier list. If the results are too many, open a folder such as Pictures or Documents first. Then search inside it. The search only looks in the folder you are standing in.

Find all photos on a Mac

On a Mac you do this in Finder. Apple's own help describes a short way to search by kind, and a longer way that gives you buttons to click.

The short way

1. Click the Finder icon in the Dock, the blue smiling face.
2. Click the search box at the top right of the Finder window.
3. Type kind:image and press Return. You can also type kind:images.

For documents in general, type kind:document. Apple lists other short words too, such as kind:music and kind:email.

The click-and-choose way

1. In Finder, type anything in the search box and press Return.
2. Click the + button under the search box to add a search rule.
3. In the first pop-up menu, choose Kind.
4. In the second pop-up menu, choose Images or Document.

Make sure This Mac is selected at the top of the results. If it says the name of one folder, the search only looks in that folder.

Find all Word documents on a Mac

The Kind rule groups many things as “Document”. To narrow it down to Word files only, add a second rule by name.

1. In Finder, click the search box, type a single dot and press Return.
2. Click the + button to add a rule.
3. In the first pop-up menu, choose Name. In the second, choose ends with.
4. In the box, type .docx.
5. Make sure This Mac is selected at the top.

Repeat with .doc if you also have older files. Click a result and look at the path bar at the bottom of the window to see where it lives. If you cannot see the bar, click View › Show Path Bar.

Keep the search for next time

If you will want this list again, a Mac can remember the search for you. After you set up the search, click Save just under the search box. Apple calls the result a Smart Folder. It appears in the Finder sidebar, and each time you open it, it shows the current files of that type.

On Windows, there is no button for this, but you can simply type the same short word again. It takes a few seconds.

If you are hunting for something by what it says rather than what type it is, these guides may help: how to find a file by what is inside it, and what to do when Windows Search can't find it.

Ask Key to find them instead

If you would rather not remember kind: and ext:, you can just ask. Key is a free assistant that lives on your computer. You can speak to it or type to it, and both give the same result.

Key finds your files and tells you what it did. You can ask for it in half a sentence, such as “Find all my Word documents”. It works out what you meant, does the search in the real window you already use, and checks the result before it tells you. If two things could match, it asks which one you meant.

While it works, a small panel shows what it is doing, and you can stop it at any point.

Key runs on Windows 10 and 11, and on any Mac with macOS 11 Big Sur or newer. It is free to download, and every feature is in the free version.

Once you have the list, you can ask for the next step too, for example “Put this photo on the Desktop”. If your Downloads folder is where most of the clutter lives, this guide to cleaning up Downloads is a good next read.

A few quick tips

• Start wide, then narrow. Search the whole computer first, then add a word or a folder if the list is too long.
• Check the search area. If a file you know exists is missing, the search is usually looking in only one folder.
• Look at the ending. A file that ends in .docx is a Word document. A file that ends in .jpg or .png is a photo.
• Be patient. On a large computer, the first search can take a minute to fill up.

Whichever way you choose, you only need to name the type of file once. Your computer does the walking through the folders.

Related guide: How to find a file you saved but can't find

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