Question for Bitcoin Gurus
 

A friend of mine is going through a divorce. Long story, blah. He thinks that there may be a bitcoin address in one of the files on a computer that he may lose in a settlement, but has no idea what file type it might be (text, html, word, excel, anything).

Is there a way to search a PC for a Bitcoin address, or bitcoin wallet? If she was to use file find or some other type of search program that would search all files for a string, what would it be?

An address would be a text file...or word doc. Really depends on how he saved it...

Right. So not knowing the format of how it was saved, lets say its a .txt file for now, is there anything about the address itself that could be searched for? For example, do addresses always have the same number of characters, or have the same prefix or suffix, etc?

Amazing what you find on google ;)

A Bitcoin address, or simply address, is an identifier of 26-35 alphanumeric characters, beginning with the number 1 , 3 or bc1 that represents a possible destination for a bitcoin payment.

wallet.dat

This is the correct answer. Unless your friend changed the file name to something else, the default name is "wallet.dat".

For safety, he can search for any .dat file. If he didn't move anything, it will most likely be under a folder named after a crypto currency.

Thats where private key info is stored. He asked where his address was stored...i read it as he wrote it in a file then saved it. Perhaps I'm off base :shrug:

an address does not necessarily give you access to a wallet. you either need the .dat file, or you'll need the private key to open that address.