Find in Files

Find in Files allows you to search a specified set of files. The matches found and actions taken are listed in the Find Results window selected in Result options.

You can use any of the following methods to display Find in Files in the Find and Replace window.

To display Find in Files

On the menu bar, choose Edit > Find and Replace.

Choose Find in Files.

To cancel a Find operation, press Ctrl + Break.

The Find and Replace tool does not search directories with the Hidden or System attribute.

Find what

To search for a new text string or expression, specify it in the box. To search for any of the 20 strings that you searched for most recently, open the drop-down list and choose the string. Choose the adjacent Expression Builder button if you want to use one or more regular expressions in your search string. For more information, see Using regular expressions in Visual Studio.

The Expression Builder button will only be enabled if you have selected Use Regular Expressions under Find options.

Look in

The option chosen from the Look in drop-down list determines whether Find in Files searches only in currently active files or in all files stored within certain folders. Select a search scope from the list or click the Browse (. ) button to display the Choose Search Folders dialog box and to enter your own set of directories. You can also type a path directly into the Look in box.

With the Entire Solution or Current Project options, project and solution files are not searched. If you want to look in project files, choose a search folder.

If the Look in option selected causes you to search a file that you have checked out from source code control, only the version of that file which has been downloaded to your local machine is searched.

Include subfolders

Specifies that subfolders of the Look in folder will be searched.

Find options

You can expand or collapse the Find options section. The following options can be selected or cleared:

Match case

When selected, a Find Results search will be case-sensitive

Match whole word

When selected, the Find Results windows will only return whole word matches.

Use Regular Expressions

If this check box is selected, you can use special notations to define patterns of text to match in the Find what or Replace with text boxes. For a list of these notations, see Using regular expressions in Visual Studio.

Look at these file types

This list indicates the types of files to search through in the Look in directories. If this field is blank, all of the files in the Look in directories will be searched.

Select any item in the list to enter a preconfigured search string that will find files of those particular types.

Result options

You can expand or collapse the Result options section. The following options can be selected or cleared:

Find results 1 window

When selected, the results of the current search will replace the content of the Find Results 1 window. This window opens automatically to display your search results. To open this window manually, select Other Windows from the View menu and choose Find Results 1.

Find results 2 window

When selected, the results of the current search will replace the content of the Find Results 2 window. This window opens automatically to display your search results. To open this window manually, select Other Windows from the View menu and choose Find Results 2.

Display file names only

Displays a list of files containing search matches rather than displaying the search matches themselves.

Append results

Appends the results from the search to the previous search results.

поиск find

Выполняет поиск строки текста в файле или файлах и отображает строки текста, содержащие указанную строку. Searches for a string of text in a file or files, and displays lines of text that contain the specified string.

Синтаксис Syntax

Параметры Parameters

Параметр Parameter	Описание Description
/v /v	Отображает все строки, не содержащие указанный объект . Displays all lines that don’t contain the specified .
/C /c	Подсчитывает количество строк, содержащих указанный объект , и отображает итоговое значение. Counts the lines that contain the specified and displays the total.
/n /n	Предшествует каждой строке с номером строки файла. Precedes each line with the file’s line number.
/i /i	Указывает, что при поиске регистр не учитывается. Specifies that the search is not case-sensitive.
[«/OFF» [строка]] [/off[line]]	Не пропускает файлы с установленным атрибутом «вне сети». Doesn’t skip files that have the offline attribute set.
Обязательный элемент. Required. Задает группу символов (заключенных в кавычки), которые требуется найти. Specifies the group of characters (enclosed in quotation marks) that you want to search for.
[ :][

] Указывает расположение и имя файла, в котором выполняется поиск указанной строки. Specifies the location and name of the file in which to search for the specified string. /? /? Отображение справки в командной строке. Displays help at the command prompt.

Комментарии Remarks

Если вы не используете /i, эта команда ищет именно то, что указано для String. If you don’t use /i, this command searches for exactly what you specify for string. Например, эта команда обрабатывает символы и по a — A разному. For example, this command treats the characters a and A differently. Однако при использовании параметра /i Поиск выполняется без учета регистра, а в a A качестве того же символа обрабатывается и. If you use /i, however, the search becomes non-case-sensitive, and it treats a and A as the same character.

Если строка, которую нужно найти, содержит кавычки, необходимо использовать двойные кавычки для каждой кавычки, содержащейся в строке (например, «» Эта строка содержит кавычки «»). If the string you want to search for contains quotation marks, you must use double quotation marks for each quotation mark contained within the string (for example, «»This string contains quotation marks»»).

Если опустить имя файла, эта команда выступает в качестве фильтра, принимая входные данные из стандартного источника входных данных (обычно это клавиатура, канал (|) или перенаправленный файл), а затем отображает все строки, содержащие строку. If you omit a file name, this command acts as a filter, taking input from the standard input source (usually the keyboard, a pipe (|), or a redirected file) and then displays any lines that contain string.

Параметры и параметры командной строки для команды Find можно вводить в любом порядке. You can type parameters and command-line options for the find command in any order.

Нельзя использовать подстановочные знаки (* и ?) в именах файлов или расширениях, указанных при использовании этой команды. You can’t use wildcards (* and ?) in file names or extensions that you specify while using this command. Для поиска строки в наборе файлов, указанных с помощью подстановочных знаков, эту команду можно использовать в команде for . To search for a string in a set of files that you specify with wildcards, you can use this command within a for command.

При использовании /c и /v в одной командной строке эта команда отображает количество строк, которые не содержат указанную строку. If you use /c and /v in the same command line, this command displays a count of the lines that don’t contain the specified string. При указании параметра /c и /n в той же командной строке команда Find игнорирует параметр /n. If you specify /c and /n in the same command line, find ignores /n.

Эта команда не распознает возвраты каретки. This command doesn’t recognize carriage returns. При использовании этой команды для поиска текста в файле, который содержит символы возврата каретки, необходимо ограничить строку поиска текстом, который может быть найден между возвратами каретки (то есть строкой, которая не может быть прервана символом возврата каретки). When you use this command to search for text in a file that includes carriage returns, you must limit the search string to text that can be found between carriage returns (that is, a string that is not likely to be interrupted by a carriage return). Например, эта команда не сообщает о совпадении для строкового налогового файла, если между словами налога и файла происходит возврат каретки. For example, this command doesn’t report a match for the string tax file if a carriage return occurs between the words tax and file.

Примеры Examples

Чтобы отобразить все строки из Pencil.AD , которые содержат строку резкость карандаша, введите: To display all lines from pencil.ad that contain the string pencil sharpener, type:

Чтобы найти текст, «специалисты, обозначенные в документе только для обсуждения. To find the text, «The scientists labeled their paper for discussion only. Это не окончательный отчет «. It is not a final report.» в файле report.doc введите: in the report.doc file, type:

Для поиска набора файлов можно использовать команду Find в команде for . To search for a set of files, you can use the find command within the for command. Чтобы найти в текущем каталоге файлы с расширением bat, которые содержат строку строки, введите следующую команду: To search the current directory for files that have the extension .bat and that contain the string PROMPT, type:

Чтобы найти и отобразить имена файлов на диске C, которые содержат строковый ЦП, выполните поиск на жестком диске с помощью вертикальной черты (|), чтобы направить выходные данные команды dir в команду Find следующим образом: To search your hard disk to find and display the file names on drive C that contain the string CPU, use the pipe (|) to direct the output of the dir command to the find command as follows:

Так как поиск при поиске выполняется с учетом регистра, а dir создает прописные буквы, необходимо либо ввести строковый процессор в верхнем регистре, либо использовать параметр командной строки /i с командой Find. Because find searches are case-sensitive and dir produces uppercase output, you must either type the string CPU in uppercase letters or use the /i command-line option with find.

How to Search Through File Contents on Windows 10

Windows comes with a robust search engine that allows you to find apps, search the Windows Store and the web, and find files on your PC. The search engine in Windows 7 used to find content not just in file names, but also in the contents of files. You could even search the contents of .zip files in Windows 7.

Most people are unaware that this functionality still exists in Windows 10. It’s just not obvious how to enable it. Today we’ll show you how to enable searching through file contents in Windows 10.

Turn on Option To Search Through File Contents

Click the Cortana or Search button or box on the Taskbar and type “indexing options.” Then, click on Indexing Options under Best match.

On the Indexing Options dialog box, click Advanced.

Click the File Types tab on the Advanced Options dialog box. By default, all the extensions are selected, and that’s what we want. This will allow Windows to search through all the types of files on your hard drive.

Select the Index Properties and File Contents option in the How should this file be indexed section. Then, click OK.

A Rebuild Index dialog box displays, warning you that rebuilding the index might take a long time. That means that all the contents of your hard drive might not be searched until the indexing process is finished. Click OK.

Click Close on the Indexing Options dialog box.

Search Through File Contents in File Explorer

Now, when you search for text in File Explorer, Windows will search the contents of files for the text in addition to searching the file names.

Remember, if you don’t get results for your search right away, you may have to wait for the folders and files to be indexed.

What methods do you use to search the contents of files in Windows? Do you use any third-party apps to search the contents of files? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

32 Comments

Well THANK YOU Lori Kaufman!! Not being able to search contents has been a pain.

I agree – this page was very helpful!

I just need to search a project folder without having to enable indexing on all system. Is Microsoft incapable to just add something simple as a grep command ? The Find in files option in previous versions of Windows was good enough for the job. But as usual when something is good for the users MS kills it. No brain- No Pain – Big Gain for MS.

Thanks. Turn this way down to just a few boxes back when was having h/w issues in Windows 8 & then into 10. Now with more powerful & stable gear it’s time to click these back on. Will help with the video files as well as within .docx & photo, art files.

Microsoft never really promoted the search function well enough, it is fundamental to the way the O/S’s since Windows 7 are geared towards using the search function rather than go trawling through the file explorer tree, I am fairly confident they are visionary in this approach as in the future computers will not rely so heavily on computing, but will have all possible answers pre-loaded in the quantum field and the user would simply feed in the quest and the computer would then search for the single correct answer.

Quite the opposite in fact. Simply having answers pre-loaded does not mean anything for computing speed. The very action of searching, or to be more precise sorting the information in more feasible manner, still requires both computing and time. This has not changed, even with the advent of Quantum Computing. Google operates in the same manner and is a clear example of what is at the forefront, they have machines already performing the search beforehand. Yet what the user inputs is really the search engine sorting out the information in a way that seems the most relevant to the user.

Working in this field of search/sort algorithms, I do not think that we will see any new innovations on this subject in decades to come, sadly enough.

This is honestly the first time that I see this feature on Windows. Good job.

Thank you! Is there a way to print the contents of a folder (a list of all the files in a file)? I used to do this on my Atari computer and it was quite handy at times.

I have got File – Home – Share – View but not Search on the toolbar.

What am I doing wrong.

Me also. I don’t have the Search tab. Only File – Home – Share – View

Hi Bill and Dolly,

Not to worry! As soon as you enter anything in the search boxes located below the toolbar, the Search tab magically appears!

For an example, look at the last picture above and you will see the search boxes labeled 1 and 2. Type anything in the #2 box on your computer and you will see the search tab show up.

Hope that helps.

How do I force Windows File Explorer to display OpenOffice files on searching a term? I can search “.odt” and get results, but when I search a directory that contains such OpenOffice files, I get no results, other than old doc, docx, adobe and so on.

I tried to search the way you describe above and got .odt results no matter how I searched. I used phrases from .odt documents and I tried searching just .odt and had no problem.

So, I am wondering if you followed the steps laid out in this post to open search to titles and contents of documents? If not, then I would do that first.

If you have already done that, I would suggest going to the page shown above named Advanced Options and on the File Types tab, scroll down the list and make sure the odt file type is checked. If not, check the box, wait for indexing (takes a while) is complete, then try your search again.

Hope this helps you!

Thanks, I had discovered that. Now I am annoyed that details | content shows a tiny thumbnail, not the nice full preview I get with pdf files.

The indexing does not seem to work at all for file content even in indexed locations.
The disk I am searching has around 55GB data. Where Google desktop would have given a result as I typed, Win10 search either does not find at all or takes several hours.
Win 10 search takes as input only a word or phrase, not several key words.

But, I do not know of any tool that will do so either. Any help will be appreciated

Use Windows Commander rather than W’10’s search engine. It is convenience and fast with great configuration.

I used to use the free word perfect editor. It worked just like word perfect but worked at a text file level. I could quickly search thru Windows MSWord files for context content. Mainly speaches so I could do a quick analysis of a proposed speech for the main concepts of the proposed speech and advise on what the official line had been on key words.

It was called WEd.exe
see it at
https://sites.google.com/site/texteditors/Home/files/wp_ed.zip?attredirects=0
wp_ed.zip
I would run it in a command window. F3 gives you the menu, you set the folder you want to search and specify the content key words you want to find and it would list all the files then you would just do f2 to search thru for the key words. I could do this faster than any two people in my office. Now I would just use findstr in a batch file.

So, if your IT department has any brains at all, you don’t have Administrator Rights on your own PC (preventing you from installing unapproved software – software that might be free for home use but licensing requirements if used for business, software that might have a virus, software that might interfere with the software provided by the company, etc.). You need Admin rights to click on “Advanced” in “Indexing Options”. Is there any other way to search through file contents, i.e. something you don’t need Admin rights for?

Third party software like ultra search

I had been so disappointed all these years with Windows 10 that I couldn’t do a phrase search. I finally decided to look it up…I’m SOoo glad I found you to clear this up!

I have file with dashes and numbers in the name. No searches appear after a begin typing the dash and first 2 digits:

During the last 3-4 months there has been a drastic (and unwelcome) change to the search feature. I often searched for content inside many types of files with no problems. Now I have nothing but problems. I found the procedure you outline above on my own and hoped things would change, but no joy. I experience many false positives and false negatives. (I.e., files reported by search do NOW contain the search term, and failure to find files I KNOW are there. Additionally, the search is returned in some kind of virtual screen that has no apparent connection to the rest of File Explorer, i.e., I cannot get back to the folder I was searching. Back buttons don’t work, ESC doesn’t work, deleting the search term (my former default) doesn’t work. I can only conclude that someone at MS has royally screwed up this feature. I will have to find a utility to search inside files like I used to use years ago.

Search Note is an impressive way to search content inside your shared documents.
Why don’t you give it a try? Search note is available on github.
https://github.com/scorpionit01/SearchNote

03 Aug 2020: Followed all steps successfully…EXCEPT A WORKING SEARCH OF CONTENTS. Added the php extension, allowed it to complete indexing, did a cold boot, used the indexing troubleshooter (which said Windows Search wasn’t working, then said it fixed the problem). Still finds two (pdf) files which do not have the string and none that do, same as before.

This information is quite helpful to me. I was finding hard time searching and locating file names. The only results I was getting ended with folder names. Thank you.

24 August 2020. I followed these steps long ago, and have never been able to search file content in W-10. Tried it again today. A search that should have turned up about 200 or so documents in a particular client’s folder showed 83.

No, it’s not an ordinary word.

I also noted that three Word documents which were done this morning (and obviously have not yet been indexed), which had the word in the body, showed up on the list. The other 80 had the word in the file name. But I know for a fact those 200+ documents exist. And if the search had functioned properly I would have been able to figure out which of those 200 was the one I need to find.

All of which says to me that once my system has indexed something, despite the “index file name/contents” being clicked, a search of the content isn’t possible.

Make sure that windows search service enabled.

This is a very good hint. I usually resort to Bash tools on command line but this is much more convenient. Thanks.

I just compared the (right-click on filename)Properties for SEARCH.TXT and SEARCH_SUB.TXT. I clicked on “Advanced” in the Properties window under the General tab, There is a box that says “Allow this file to have contents indexed in addition to other file properties”. SEARCH.TXT had it checked, while it was unchecked for SEARCH_SUB.TXT. This kind of garbage is why MS can drive users crazy. Was it an oversight or did some exec realize that if a User had a big tree of large files under Documents, that searching would bog down. Now the question: how do I batch set this attribute for my many 1000”s of TXT, DOC, PDF, XLS, etc files? And dare I do it? Maybe it will make File Explorer searches into monsters.

Important actions preceded my previous post, so read this first. I created a new TXT file I called SEARCH.TXT in my Documents folder and added the text “bbbb”. After typing bbbb in File Explorer’s search window, Explorer found the SEARCH.TXT file. I tried the same procedure creating a SEARCH_SUB.TXT file in a subfolder I’ll call Documents\Subfold. But now the a search for bbbb failed and only came up with SEARCH.TXT, but not SEARCH_SUB.TXT (both files were identical except for where they resided). I moved SEARCH.TXT into Documents\Sobfold. The search for bbbb still found SEARCH.TXT in Documents\Subfold. I created an identical SEARCH.TXT in the special, MS pre-loaded folders in my User file like Music, Downloads, Pictures and Videos. The search for bbbb worked in these subfolders! I moved SEARCH_SUB.TXT from its subfolder into the Documents folder and opened and resaved it. Still not discoverable.

Turns out there’s a “Contents Searchability” Attribute that is set when files are created in these special pre-loaded folders (Documents, Music,…), but is not set when created in a subfolder (at least not on my Windows 10 version).

One nice free tool I forgot to mention is called “Agent Ransack”; yeah, it’s legit, free for the free version. There is a pro version that honestly, I never felt the need for.
I installed and on the desktop shortcut, I added a hot-key combo “ctrl-alt-shift-f” and off it goes.
But I must say that when I’m already looking stuff in Explorer, I rather use the built-in and search from there.