Windows 7: Search does not find files that it should, directory is indexed, and *.php included on the extension list

As with many software/hardware problems, Microsoft is ignoring this issue, and assuming that the problems are mostly human error.  Many of the suggested corrections don't work or miss the point altogether.

Here is a very simple manifestation of the problem.  One of my folders has a slew of "rtf" files.  Yes, the folder is in my indexed locations, and yes, Windows search is set to index and search the contents of "rtf" files.  No, I was not using McAfee when I conducted this experiment.  I am using the latest version of Windows 7 64-bit, all up-to-date.

Nothing I did could coax or cajole Windows into finding a simple text string in the contents of an rtf file.

I have read through this entire thread, and nothing I see hear begins to fixes the problem, except possibly the suggestions of 3rd party searches.

It would be a refreshing change if Microsoft actually took note of this topic, acknowledged that there is, in fact, a problem, and addressed it.  I would be shocked if that happened; it would be uncharacteristic for them.

-ETC

Dear Paul,

I thought your problem interesting, so I have done the following experiment:

Running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, I made sure Adobe’s 64-bit IFilter plugin was installed, and that the PDF filters were set for contents indexing (Indexing Options/Advanced Options).  Then, in Advanced Options, I selected Rebuild to rebuild the index from scratch (incidentally, I always create a directory C:\WindowsSearchIndex and relocate the index there, using the same dialog box).

Finally, I prepared three PDF files, “2007 Alpha paper.pdf”, “2007 Beta paper.pdf”, and “2007 Gamma paper.pdf”, which I put two levels deep inside “My Documents”.

Overnight, Windows completed indexing at 496,436 items, which I reckon is about right.  Today I started searching from the “My Documents” level.

1)       When I entered “2007”, Windows took around 35 seconds to find my three files plus all other files with “2007” indexed  in the content.

2)       I specified “2007 type:pdf”, and it took around 15s to find the three PDFs and all other PDFs containing “2007”.

3)       Specifying “2007 ext:.pdf”, it took 10s to find files as in (2).

4)       Then I specified ‘System.FileName:~<”2007” ’, and the three corresponding PDFs (only) were found within three seconds.  (The syntax means “find files with name starting…”).

You can find search syntax such as in (4) here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/advanced-tips-for-searching-in-windows

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/advanced-tips-for-searching-in-windows

5)       Finally, I used the 64-bit version of Agent Ransack (see my post just above) to look for “2007*.pdf”, from the “My Documents” level as above, and it found all three in 35s.

6)       Finally finally, I used the Advanced Search in Adobe Reader to look for “2007”.  This took a long time, because AR does a full un-indexed content search for the word specified.  The search appears to be of content only, and not of filenames, so it only found those of my prepared files which actually had “2007” in the text.

So all I can suggest to you is to try different search syntax (see reference above and my reference to a “Windows Search” document in my post above yours), and if that doesn’t work, try rebuilding your search index overnight.

Alternatively, use Agent Ransack, or (gulp) reinstall Windows to the stage that you have it how you basically want it, then make a system backup (use EaseUS, not Windows).  I run a relatively fresh installation of W7U, which I refresh from an external system backup if things seem to be going belly-up.

Of course, you may be running 32-bit Windows, which could for some obscure reason behave differently.  I am in the process of doing the same tests on a 32-bit machine, but for some reason it has been taking forever to index.  I have found a way of speeding up the indexing, and I’ll post when I have a result.

Incidentally, if you have the opportunity to put “tags” on your PDF files when creating them, that will also speed up using Windows Search to find them.  See references above.

J M Ward

I have a similar problem.

In my folder with research papers, all papers are named systematicall "[year] [authors] [title].pdf".

When searching for [year], I never get the complete list of papers from that year. So 1 paper in the folder would be "2007 Johnson etcetera.pdf" and another (in the same folder) would be "2007 Smith something else.pdf", but search systematically only returns one of the two.

Creation date or file source does not seem to have an influence on which files are found and which are not. I tried everything that has been suggested here, to no avail.

After a fresh installation of Windows  7 Ultimate, I used the Control Panel/Indexing Options/Advanced dialog box to relocate the search index to a folder I created, i.e. C:\WindowsSearchIndex.  At the same time I specified a rebuild of the index.  Then I specified the folders to index, which in my case is all the folders below D:\MyName, since I have separated my data from the operating system and program files by putting it on a separate partition, D:.  I also specified another entire partition and some of the operating system and program folders. After I had done all that, it turned out that the Windows Search service had stopped, and I had to restart it using services.msc.  On reflection it might have been useful to turn the service off deliberately, to stop any system action during the resetting activities.

I then just let it get on with the indexing, and it has now completed indexing about 261,000 files, which I reckon is about right.  Searching now seems to bring up the expected results quite quickly (incidentally it seems better not to press the Enter key after typing in the search term, but just to let the search function get on with matching it).  The default format of the search results is not particularly useful, but it can be tweaked.   And the contents of the files, where applicable, are shown OK, even for PDF files,although I haven't tried searching for terms within a PDF (see comments about IFilters below).

You can download IFilters packs which enable indexing of the contents of Microsoft Office 2010 documents, e-mails etc., from here:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=17062

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=17062

Adobe also produce IFilters for Windows searches of PDFs' contents; apparently the IFilters plugin is bundled with Adobe Reader, so if you have that installed you already have the 32-bit IFilters.  The 64-bit version can be found here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025&promoid=DTEHN

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025&promoid=DTEHN

This should help with the problems with PDFs mentioned above.

Windows Search is actually quite sophisticated, but typically Microsoft has not bothered to document the search command syntax properly in the Help, or anywhere else that I can find.  Fortunately, a guide by Mike Halsey is available from his website as Part 5 of a free PDF book here: http://www.thelongclimb.com/books/win7powerfree.pdf.   This will help with searching for specific types of file, file date ranges, etc.

If you still don't get on with Windows Search, go to MythicSoft's website at:

http://mythicsoft.com/page.aspx?type=agentransack&page=home   or

http://mythicsoft.com/page.aspx?page=download&type=filelocatorlite

and download the free search tool Agent Ransack/File Locator Lite, which is fast and easy to use.

One or other of these search tools does the job for me;  I don't find the need for anything else.  I hope all this helps someone out.