i am using opensuse 10.3 GNOME which has nautilus file manager.I traversed to /windows/E/ which is my ntfs partition of windows.Then I pressed search button & gave parameter *.pdf but no results though there are lots of pdf files in folders of my E drive.Does linux have wild card character other than *.What I am doing wrong?
NOTE:I know that there are find & locate commands to search files in terminal but I want to know why nautilus is not searching desired files.

That's a good question. I can't recall the last time I used nautilus to search for anything. But to debug: Does searching for "*" return anything?

* does not give any result i.e 0 items

In Nautilus you don't have to use wildcards. If you type .pdf in the search bar, it will find all the files containing .pdf in their name. The wildcard is implicit. Furthermore, you can select the file type: PDF files are in the list.

To colucix
.pdf did not yield any result then added the option of location & file type in search results with /windows/E and postscript/pdf as input.Still nothing.

Did the Natutilus documentation mention how to search for files?

I too have been frustrated with the Nautilus file searches as I did not know the "secrets":

Secret #1:
As someone already posted, do NOT use wildcard characters (*,%,?,_ ... etc).

Secret #2:
Perform a dummy search to bring up further search filtering options in order to filter by file type.

Secret #3:
The search text box cannot be empty. For example, if searching for all files of a specific file type, use a space (" ") in the search text box. If the search box is empty, the search will not execute.

Secret #4:
Results can be further filtered or additional locations added by clicking the plus (+) symbol next to reload button. Continue to add as many filters/locations as needed.

Thanks darinmiller,
I will try your suggestion & report if any problem occured in the same thread.
To colucix,
I read the nautilus file search documentation it said that type the starting file name also it said you can limit search places by adding places & file type.What do you suggest I should type in search bar if I want to find all pdf files in given folder.

Just pdf .

I think nautilus cannot search in NTFS and cd because it gives 0 results when you add restriction of place to file system or media otherwise it gives files satisfying the criteria located in ext3 partition.Has anybody used nautilus file browser & got relevant results after searching for file in NTFS partition which gets mounted as /windows/<drive letter> in openSUSE.

Hi,
I know it's quite a while since the last post, but I am brought here by google and feel that someone else or myself might ended up here again in future search.
My environment:
Linux Mint 11
2.6.38-8-generic; x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux.
Nautilus 2.32.2.1
Linux partition is my home folder on internal hd; NTFS on external hd

>> .pdf does work on both NTFS and linux partition
Note: I have to wait quite a while (until the status bar says 12,000 over files)
Note: Folders are also listed (can further filter by FileType= Pdf/Postscript) - 11,000 over files. Remember to wait and watch the status bar. If nothing found, it will say "0 items"
>> . alone seems to kind of hang Nautilus - more like a long .... wait... I think it is listing all files and folders with a "." in the name.
Well, don't think I can wait for it to finish.
Just my 2cents to contribute back.

The reason why you can search and the others had problems is that you're using Mint and they were using SUSE. Nautilus doesn't actually search: it just calls the Gnome search tool. Unfortunately SUSE doesn't provide a search tool for any Desktop except KDE!

Actually, I never there was a search option in Nautilus; all these years I've just run the search tool directly.

Incidentally, it's seldom worth answering an old thread, as the problem may have gone away (although it hasn't in this case). Thanks for being helpful, though, and welcome to the forum.

I had to necro this because it's 2016 and Ubuntu 16.04 Nautilus still behaves exactly as the helpful posters described. It never occurred to me to use the space " " trick, as I've battled with this search function on and off until I just read this post.

If you're still around: Thanks! Because your posts are still accurate and helpful.

How to you use wildcards, especially the * (star) in Linux Ubuntu Nautilus GUI File Search?

I also was just struggling with this issue, but I think I found an answer.

Here are the equivalent Windows and Nautilus search patterns:

Windows: *diagram*.ppt
Nautilus: diagram ppt

Basically, try using a spacebar character in Nautilus where you would use a * character normally. I think I FINALLY figured this out, after years of trying... sigh.