In windows 7 - I want to search for all files containing "A word or phrase in the file". The standard XP search box.

Anonymous

In Windows 7 - I want to search/find all files containing "A word or phrase in the file". The old standard XP search box.

I do NOT supply: file name; file type; drive letter; etc. - nothing.

I tried searching for this - just can't find any discussion. And of course, not having this search would be insane. It is precisely what we have a computer for.

And no 3rd party programs are allowed.

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous

I've been looking into this because I know the search has been failing for me. I think the difference in whether Windows search works or not depends on the FILE EXTENSION which contains your search text. For example, if you look for the word "spam", it will be found if it is in a whatever.doc file, or whatever.txt file. However, if you were to rename the file to whatever.xyz, it will no longer find the word.

Here are all the steps I think you need to follow to actually search:

Make sure that Windows 7 is actually going to search files with your extension, and it appears that using this list properly is important *whether or not you are looking in an indexed location*!!

a. Hit the start button and type "search" in the search box.

b. Select "Change How Windows Searches"

c. Hit "Advanced"

d. Select the "File Types" tab.

e. Make sure the file extension for the files you want to search in is on the list *and* is set to "Index Properties and File Contents" (yes, pick your jaw up off the floor). I know this appears to be for file indexing, but it does seem to make a difference on whether you find the file in non-indexed locations as well.

f. Say "Ok" and exit all the dialog boxes

2. Actually perform your search on the folder in question. Depending on some other settings you may have to type "content: spam" to find "spam" *in* the files instead of files with the word "spam" in the name. Alternately, if you press the "Alt" key when you're exploring in the folder, you can choose "Tools / Folder Options" go to the "Search" tab and select "Always search file names and contents".

If what I have written is actually correct, then IMHO Microsoft has coughed up the ball bigtime on this one. Personally, I now recognize that I can't use the search feature, and I'm installing Cygwin so I can use "grep" to search the contents of files. Not cool and not amused.

Good luck to all the searchers.

~Pete

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Anonymous

To get your suggestion to the right people at Microsoft, please go to the Give Us Feedback for Windows 7 page.

Boulder Computer Maven

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional

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@CmdrKeene 90,631 Volunteer Moderator

There is an option that seems to match what you're looking for:

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Anonymous

To find "phrase in the file" type content:"phrase in the file" in the searchbox.

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364 additional answers

Anonymous

2013-03-25T21:50:20+00:00

All well and good... but I for one am still clueless as to when and why IFilters came into existence.

Back when DOS/Win3.11 level systems were the order of the day, it was possible to search ANY file for ANY combination of characters....

Try searching for such a string in a binary file today. Good luck with that.

I understand things have necessarily moved on, gotten more complicated due to security issues, etc....

To take things in reverse order, AFIK, IFilters really have nothing to do with security.

As for searching for a string in a binary file, that raises an issue I hadn't thought of--can Win7 Search find a string of arbitrary characters, including nonprinting, graphics, and other characters. I'd be interested to know. I'm not even sure how you would specify the characters to search for.

Finally (or first), what most people want to find is good old text. However, several dominant types of documents that actually contain text (like PDF) keep the text in a proprietary format that is not plain text. Open a text (not image) PDF file in Notepad and see if you can find any of the text that you see in Adobe Reader.

So if Microsoft wants users to be able to find text in proprietary file formats, then Microsoft has two choices: (1) build its own file interpreter for each proprietary format and maintain it to keep up with all the changes or (2) require the file's proprietor (like Adobe) to build an interface to the search feature. Microsoft chose #2 and implemented the IFilter standard, a kind of search API. Adobe has built an IFilter that can feed search hits back to Win7 Search, and so--to the extent that there are no bugs--it works.

[Edit:]

To address a couple of your earlier posts:

Win7 Search will not find anything in a PDF if the Adobe IFilter is not installed. In most cases, it is installed with Adobe Reader, but sometimes I've had to go to the Adobe website and download/install it manually.

As for whether Win7 Search will find a phrase in any file, that is what the OP was asking, and the answer depends on where the file is located and how you search for it and whether Win7 Search still has bugs in it (an open question). Look through this thread and you will see how we demonstrated that the typical search syntax doesn't find phrases in files on networked drives, but there is another syntax that probably works in most cases (the jury is still out on whether it works reliably).
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