Check last activity on a Cisco switch interface

I would like to check our Cisco switches for unused interfaces, including those that have cables plugged in but nothing attached to the end of them. The only way I know of doing it is to reset the counters to zero, leave it a few weeks, then check again and conclude that those whose counters are still zero are not in use.

Is there a way to establish immediately which are not in use, perhaps by looking at the last time a packet was transmitted or received on an interface or by obtaining the average over a period longer than the five minutes given by the “show interface” command?