Locating and removing transferred files

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Hi All . . .
I'm not exactly a recent switcher...but I am extremely inexperienced with certain things concerning my Mac. I am an avid fan of this forum.

History.......I have an old website i began building many years ago. I use Network Solutions to host my site. i recently became interested in building a professional looking site, but my site contained many old and uneeded files, folders, pictures, audio and video clips, clutter, etc. Also, Network Solutions sent me an email recently telling me my site had been compromised with malware (which takes you to a Russian website).
To the problem....I contacted Network Solutions support folks last night to see how to completely wipe my old data and start with a fresh, clean uncluttered slate. My plan is to use iWeb or maybe purchase Dreamweaver to build a proper site. The support guy gave me pretty good instructions of what I needed to do. I began selecting the old files and folders and pressing the DELETE radio button. I had to do them one at a time because of the size. It turns out that somehow instead of deleting the files, many were actually tranferred to my Mac's hard drive! They are in several different places of my hard drive...especially in the USER section. I need someone's help in locating all these files and delting them from my computer. All of the files transferred to my Mac are dated 9-17-15...so that is how I will need to search for them. I do not know how to use Finder and Spotlight to pull up all the files dated 9-17-15...i am not a power user. Would someone please give me simplified instructions on how to round up all these files and folders using the date as a identifier? I didn't create any other new files on my computer last night, so everything that needs to be dumped will be dated 9-17-15. Would it be better to use a Time Machine or CCC restore to 9-16-15? On that note, I don't know how to use Time Machine or CCC to go back to a better time with my computer...there has never been a need to.
Please help me...provide me with simple instructions, advice, or alternate methods to clean up this mess. Thank you in advance.

Brent
 
Last edited:
M

MacInWin

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One way would be to open Finder, go to the List view. Right Click on the header over the columns and check either Date Added or Date Created, or both. Then go to the column heading and click it once. The column will sort by date, either ascending or descending. Another click on the header will reverse the sort. You'll have to visit each folder where these files may have been put to find them. PITA, but it will work. Frankly, if you have a TM backup, you might do better to nuke and reinstall and then recover the 9-16-15 TM version but that's a real PITA as well. Maybe someone can point to some third party product to help here.
 
M

MacInWin

Guest
This might do it, or at least make it somewhat easier. I have it, don't use it much, but it's fast and has some flexibility.
 
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I'd grab a copy of Find Any File that will give you all kinds or multiples of search options, and will search where Spotlight won't even go:
Download Find Any File here: Thomas Tempelmann - Find Any File
 
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Dogbreath
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Thank you Jake and pmr for your replies.

jake . . . I used Finder as you suggested and manually went through to find those files. It was tedious, but I found a couple more that I missed when I first realized the were being transferred to my computer.

pm-r . . . I did purchase FAF and used that to search for more "bad" files. FAF didn't find any more...so I consider all "bad" files gone. FAF is money well spent. I really like the different ways to specifically search for files. It is easy to use and it does much better than Spotlight. Now I have a tool that will let me search for those scattered pictures and music files that somehow wind up in weird places. FAF is a great little app for $6.

So, thanks to you both for your help!
 

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