This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How can I find the name of a file I downloaded four months ago?

  • 3 svar
  • 1 har dette problemet
  • 22 views
  • Siste svar av cor-el

more options

I downloaded a file on either February 15th or 16th. Embarrassingly, I've lost the file, simply by forgetting its name. I need to be able to search my download history, by date. Does anyone know of a way to do this? I know that the history is kept that long, and that I haven't erased the history. Finding the date that I visited the website was easy using history and an approximate date, but download history is less intuitive.

And, no, revisiting the website doesn't help; the only way to find the name of the file there (it's an ebook) is to buy it again, which is NOT what I wish to do.

This was in Windows 7 Home Premium Edition, with FireFox v. 28.0 (yes, I know it's outdated; I haven't been using that computer much lately). I don't know what version of FireFox was installed at the time of the download -- whatever was most current at the time, as I usually make a practice of installing updates.

I downloaded a file on either February 15th or 16th. Embarrassingly, I've lost the file, simply by forgetting its name. I need to be able to search my download history, by date. Does anyone know of a way to do this? I know that the history is kept that long, and that I haven't erased the history. Finding the date that I visited the website was easy using history and an approximate date, but download history is less intuitive. And, no, revisiting the website doesn't help; the only way to find the name of the file there (it's an ebook) is to buy it again, which is NOT what I wish to do. This was in Windows 7 Home Premium Edition, with FireFox v. 28.0 (yes, I know it's outdated; I haven't been using that computer much lately). I don't know what version of FireFox was installed at the time of the download -- whatever was most current at the time, as I usually make a practice of installing updates.

Valgt løsning

You can click Show All History to open the Library. There you should see the Downloads folder in the left pane between the History and Bookmarks folder. You can also click the Download (Down arrow) icon on the Navigation Toolbar and click Show All Downloads.

If you have renamed the file then you won't be able to open the file and maybe also not the containing folder where you originally saved the file, but at least this means that you still have the download history of this file.

Les dette svaret i sammenhengen 👍 0

All Replies (3)

more options

Did you check if the Downloads folder in the History Manager still has this file listed?

If that isn't the case then it might not be easy to locate the file.

more options

The downloads folder in the history manager? I'm not sure what you mean.

When I click on History, I see what I've put in the screenshot. Then it starts telling me where I've been today. Nothing about downloads, per se. I've been getting at those through Tools/Downloads.

I have FireFox set up to ask me where downloads should go, rather than automatically sending them to my Downloads folder in Windows, and even if it had automatically saved to Downloads, it wouldn't still be there now.

In a pinch, I suppose I could skip the first few in the downloads list, and then start right-clicking on individual downloads and selecting Go To Download Page, but I was hoping there might be some way to narrow it down, by getting at the date on downloads. That's fairly easy in History, but I don't see any way to do it in Tools/Downloads.

more options

Valgt løsning

You can click Show All History to open the Library. There you should see the Downloads folder in the left pane between the History and Bookmarks folder. You can also click the Download (Down arrow) icon on the Navigation Toolbar and click Show All Downloads.

If you have renamed the file then you won't be able to open the file and maybe also not the containing folder where you originally saved the file, but at least this means that you still have the download history of this file.