How Do I Search for Special Characters in File Names in Windows?
Special characters in file names can make it difficult to find a file in a search, since Windows won’t recognize, for example, the special character “À” as just a letter “A” with an accent. The easiest way to avoid this problem is not to save files with special characters in the file names; if you can’t avoid this, however, you can find the file by copying and pasting the special characters into a file search. Open a word processing document. Go to “Insert->Special Character” and highlight the special character you need, then click “OK.” Open the “Start” menu and click “Search.” Choose what type of files you want to search (Pictures, music and video, documents, or all files). Copy and paste the special character into the box labeled “All or part of the file name.” Add any other part of the file name that you can remember, plus information such as location and the last date the file was modified.
