How to find the last modified file ?

It may be straightforward to find the last modified file in a given folder, but what if I wish to find the last modified file from among a group of folders, or from all the sub directories in a folder.

Here is my solution which makes use of the following two things:

* Command prompt (to get there in Windows, press Window key + R and type cmd)

* Any spreadsheet program like MS Excel, OpenOffice Calc etc.

Step 1:

 At the command prompt, use the DIR command to generate the list of files that you wish to search among. It is important that the command returns a list of files with the date of modification column included. 

Use the > operator to write the output to a file.

Example: DIR C:\myfolder\*.c /s /t:w > dir.txt

The above command, lists all the C files in the C:\myfolder directory and its subdirectories and creates a file dir.txt in the current working directory and writes the output into it. The /t:w switch makes sure that the date and time stamp is that of the last written date. Use /t:a, /t:c instead for last access, creation dates respectively.

Step 2:

Copy and paste from the above file into the spreadsheet program. A dialog box should pop-up asking to split into columns. Use fixed width delimiter and separate out the date and time stamps into separate columns.

Step 3:

Sort with the rule: date stamps first and then time.

Reference:

* DIR command reference, http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/dir.mspx?mfr=true