# Finding and reinstalling files from the install packages

Pacifist includes the ability to search the package receipts for a specific application or file. To do so, just follow these steps:

1. Click the “Search Receipts” button in Pacifist’s main window, or choose “Search Receipts…” from the Pacifist menu.
2. In the Receipt Search window that appears, type the name of the application or file you wish to reinstall.
   - If you wish, you can search for multiple applications or files at once by clicking the plus (+) button to add more search criteria.
3. Set the appropriate search type in the menu to the left of the search field. If the item you wish to reinstall is an application, choose “Application Name”. If it is an ordinary file, choose “Partial Filename.”
4. Click the Search button. Once the search is complete, you should see the following window:
5. If the application that you are searching for appears on the left-hand side of the window, select it and click on the “Extract Selected Files” button.
6. Once you click the “Extract Selected Files” button, Pacifist will begin searching for the packages containing the file you are trying to reinstall.
7. Once Pacifist has found all the packages needed to reinstall a file or application, just choose where you’d like to put it, and Pacifist will attempt to extract it.

NOTE: In some cases, Pacifist may not be able to find all of the packages needed to extract a complete application. This may happen, for example, if some of the update packages that were originally used on the file have since been replaced by other packages on Apple’s Software Update servers. If this is the case, please see this page for instructions on how to manually reinstall files from the Mac OS X installer.