How to Search in Windows 7 for text within a document?

Don't you people have adult supervision since Gates left?  What kind of BS design plan states: "Eliminate the search function in XP.  It's too user friendly.  Be sure to remove most of its functionality and make the remaining functionality is as obscure as possible."

Since posting the above in February, I have changed my mind about just putting up with this awkward search facility & only use it for very simple things now.

You could consider using SearchMyFiles Alternative to Windows Search For Files + Duplicates Search instead.  The downloads are near the foot of the linked page just above the tables about language versions. It is a very good free utility & I use it a lot now.

Note - In the SearchMyFiles, Options menu [rather than in the "search options" dialog] is an entry, Explorer context menu, that also makes SearchMyFiles very convenient. Right-click on any folder & the "search options" dialog then opens with that folder address already entered as the search location.

.  To put it another way, to search for a file containing the word Fred, open Windows explorer and type Fred into the search box whilst you are at the top level folder of those you want to search in.

 

I don't know what OS you are using, my friend, but the above DOES NOT WORK in Windows 7 Home Premium

 

If you want, you can use the filters offered in the search box.  There are more filters available if you search from within Libraries. [you need to stretch the search box to the left to make it bigger so you can see the available filters]

 

The trouble is, if all you want to do is search a folder full of text files for an occurrence of a specific string then you are stuffed because searching for specific text is NOT an option in windows 7 on text files, nor can you add attributes.

This was so easy in XP, including sub-folders if so desired, ignoring case if so desired, limit search to files by name and/or extension with wildcard * ability and a box to enter any specific text that you are looking for. Oh, plus date parameters and probably other stuff I never used. It worked. And so it should because search for text strings is programming 101, I mean I am talking basic BASIC 1980s stuff  ..... AND IT IS UNBELIEVABLY USEFUL.

Windows 7 is generally good but this sort of half-baked implementation that loses functionality that many, like me, must have come to rely on in their work is just pitiful... and all because ... why?

 

I have wasted far too many hours of my life on this now, can someone please recommend a FREE utility that will give me back my ability to run a search that returns a list of every file in a folder and its sub-folders that contains "occurrences of a specific string of text" ... or do i have to write my own code .... I would, it would be easy enough if Microsoft would include some sort of GREP-like tool in Windows, something I have yearned for on Microsoft systems since the 1980s....