Find a notebook I had open recently

Question

I worked on a notebook a few weeks ago and now I can't find after looking through the most likely directories. The recent list only has 6 items in it, none of them the notebook in question. Is there a way to find ALL notebooks I have created or opened?

@Tyler Durden: Are you sure Edward Norton's character didn't put it somewhere else? — , Nov 11 '13 at 19:40
belisarius is right. Although it is easy to search your hard drive using a simple Mathematica program, it doesn't make sense to write one if your OS already provides tools for it. — Sjoerd C. de Vries, Nov 11 '13 at 19:40
Anyway, perhaps this utility I wrote provides some inspiration for the task at hand? — Sjoerd C. de Vries, Nov 11 '13 at 19:46
That kind of things usually turn out bad http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102945/ — Dr. belisarius, Nov 11 '13 at 19:49
I have to agree with belisarius and Sjoerd, use the OS search facility. E.g. on Windows 7 you just hit the windows button and type ext:.nb date:>25/10/2013 to instantly find all notebooks modified after 25th October. — Simon Woods, Nov 11 '13 at 19:55

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 11 '13 at 20:06

The following function finds a notebook (a .nb file) with a given maximum age (in days) in a given directory or its subdirectories:

notebookSearch[dir_String, age_?NumericQ] := 
   Select[
      FileNames["*.nb", {dir}, Infinity], 
      First[DateDifference[FileDate[#], DateList[], "Day"]] <= age &
   ]

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 11 '13 at 19:47

6

There is a way to tell Mathematica to remember, in its File->Open list, long list of files you have opened and not the default of 8.

Mathematica graphics

The above is from options. Simply change the value from 8 to say 100, and now you will have all those files remembered. I used to have the same problem as you until I found this option.

answered Nov 11 '13 at 19:47

Nasser

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Can you force this history display to include the parent folder and not just the filename? – Alan Dec 13 '23 at 19:39
1

@Alan good question that I also wanted. No, I am afraid I do not know how. You can ask separate question on this and see if someone have any ideas. – Nasser Dec 14 '23 at 15:29

Find a notebook I had open recently

2 Answers2