how do i look for a file which have a folder path including the words xyz?

[BigDan]

This is complicated question and I'm not even sure if it's possible but thought to ask.

Let's say I want to find all references to John on my computer but I didn't want this to be John Adams related, I was referring to a diff John. And all John Adams stuff would be in a folder path which has "Adam" anywhere in the folder path.

Essentially I'd like to exclude all folder paths that have the word "Adam" in there anywhere.

If there was a specific path like C:\Users\Admin\Adam then of course I could easily remove that by typing in the path and putting an exclamation before. But there's like 10-20 different paths mentioning this name and I'd like to remove them all.

How can I do so?

[therube]

file:abc path:xyz

c:/tmp/xyz/123/abc.txt

c:/tmp/abc/123/abc_xyz.txt

The former would be found, but not the latter.

john !path:adams

find john, but not (!) if adams is in the path

c:/tmp/adams/john.txt
c:/tmp/john/adams.txt
c:/tmp/john adams/john.txt

See what the above search turns up with each of those sample filenames.
(It might not be what you expect, so you may have to adjust your search if you need to be really precise.)

[BigDan]

this works, thanks so much!