How to create custom views in Event Viewer on Windows 10
Windows 10, like all previous versions of Windows has an app called Event Viewer. This app is great for when you need to troubleshoot your system. It gives you information on everything that happens on your system but the Event Viewer can be a lot to go through. That’s why you can create custom views in Event Viewer. Basically, you can filter events by their Event ID, among other things. Here’s how.
Custom views in Event Viewer
Open the Event Viewer. Event Viewer divides logs into two broad categories; Windows logs and Application and Services logs. Under the Application and Services, you will find nested folders and in order to create a custom view for the logs under these folders, you need to find the log under it. The icon for a log is different than that of a folder.
To start creating the custom view, click ‘Create custom view’ on the right. This will open the Create Custom View window. The custom view is basically a way to filter the events that Event Viewer has recorded so, starting from the top, you want to open the ‘Logged’ dropdown and select a date, or a date range for when the events should be filtered for.
Next, you want to select the Event Level. There are five levels; Critical, Warning, Verbose, Error, and Information. If you’re looking for specific level event, you should select it. If you’re not sure what level event it is, you can leave these options unchecked.
Next, you can choose how the events are filtered; by log, or by Source.
If you go with ‘By log’, you’ll have the two default log options to choose from; Windows logs and Application and Services logs. If you go with By Source, you can select one, or several apps and services and view all events created by them.
If you have a specific Event ID that you want to filter by, you should select the ‘By log’ option, select both types of logs, or one of the sub-logs, and then enter the Event ID(s) in the <All Event IDs> field.
Last, you can also specify keywords for the events e.g., if you’re trying to find printer related events, you might enter ‘Print’. If you’re running Event Viewer as the admin, you can also select a particular user and view event logs for them. Once you’re done, click Ok, and give the custom view a name and a description.
Your custom logs will appear in the Custom Logs section in the column on the left in Event Viewer. You can select the log, and view all events filtered under it any time you want.
