How to Exclude Specific Folders From Search Results in Windows 11

When you use the search feature in Windows 11 to find some files or folders, Windows start looking for the items in the User Profile folders like Documents, Pictures, Music, and Desktop. You can exclude specific folders and stop the search feature to look into these folders.

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How to exclude and hide a specific folder from a search result

To hide some folders in the search results you need to modify a few Windows settings in the privacy & security sections.

  1. Press the Windows+i keyboard shortcut to open up the Windows 11 settings or right-click the Start button and select Settings.
  2. In the settings window, select Privacy & Security option on the left side.
  3. On the Privacy & security screen, select Searching WIndows the option.
  4. Next, click the Add and excluded folder button to exclude the folder from enhanced search.
  5. Navigate to the folder that you want to hide from the search results. Select the folder and click the Select Folder button.
  6. As you can see the folder is added to the excluded list.
  7. You can check the existing list of folders that have already been excluded from the enhanced search. If you want to undo and allow searching in the hidden folder then you can remove it from the list, here is how to do that.

Learn more: View hidden files/folders Windows 11

Remove folder the enhanced search excluded list

  1. On the same screen of Searching Windows, you can see the list of folders that are hidden from the search results. Just click the dotted icon in front of the specific hidden folder and select Remove.

This folder is no longer hidden from the search results in Windows 11.

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