Excel spreadsheet woes, please advise?

[KateMiddletonsMum]

Daft question I'm sure, but on my computer I have loads of excel spreadsheets. on each one are lots of job numbers for work done/time taken.
What I want to do is just "search" for the job number and the right spreadsheet to pop up, I just wonder why it doesn't work !

when you do "find" you can select sheet or workbook. Or if you mean individual files, you should be able to select a search to be within a file, rather than just search for a file name.

Which version of Windows are you using? If it's Vista or Windows 7 then you should be able to type the job number in the search bit when you click Start.

If it's XP then you may want to consider using something like Google Desktop to index your files. I use this for work and I love it. I have indexed all my work emails, documents & spreadsheets and can "google" any key phrase and it pulls everything up just like going on Google itself.

Thank you, there's 50 or so excel files with 5 days work on each, all in a folder called "worksheets". I've tried with the "search" facility (little dog?) to type in the jobcard number, asking it to only search in the "worksheets" folder but it won't locate the job cards number, and if I search entire computer they don't show up either
So...have I "hidden" the data or something?

I will download the google search though, thank you.

Google Desktop worked!

Glad it worked for you. Since you mentioned the little dog, i assume you are on XP in which case you did need something like Google Desktop.

Word of warning though. You may want to go into settings and turn off web history. Otherwise it will also index that. Anyone with access to your computer can then get a full history of what you've been searching.

Thank you, I will do that