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.

8 Best Free File Search Tools

Search your Windows computer easier with a file search tool

A free file search tool is exactly what it sounds like—freeware that searches files on your computer. These free file search tools are robust programs, many with dozens more features than the built-in search function your computer has now.

If you’ve always been great at naming and organizing the hundreds or thousands (or more) files on your computer, you might need one of the programs. On the other hand, if you have files all over the place, across several hard drives, a free file search tool is a must.

Wise JetSearch

Supports wildcard searches.

Can search all connected drives at once.

No search history.

Can’t search across networks.

Wise JetSearch is a free file search utility that can search for files on any attached drive in Windows.

It can search for files on NTFS or FAT drives and supports wildcard search terms for a more flexible search. All connected drives can be searched through at once, including external drives.

Quick search is a small hidden bar that hovers at the top of your screen. You can search from anywhere by just focusing your mouse on it to reveal the search box. Results open in the full program.

Everything

Can search across network.

Accessible through right-click menu.

Lightweight; ideal for old, slow computers.

No way to shield specific content from search.

Searches restricted to file names.

Everything is another free file search tool for Windows with a super clean program interface that supports tons of awesome features.

You can use Everything to search from the Windows right-click context menu and find files across several NTFS drives at once, both internal and external ones.

As you begin searching for files, the results show up instantly — there’s no need to wait or press Enter. Newly added or modified files are added to Everything in real-time, so there’s no need to manually re-index the database. According to the Everything website, it takes one second to index around a million files.

There’s a toggle in Everything’s settings you can use to exclude any custom, system, or hidden file and folder from search results to narrow down what you’re looking for.

Everything also includes an HTTP and FTP server so you can access the files of networked computers that also have the program installed.

It would seem the features would stop here, but Everything is even free for commercial use, includes a portable download option, and lets you save searches as bookmarks for easy recall.

Duplicate File Finder

Easily and quickly weeds out multiple instances of files.

Works with all file types.

Highly customizable searches.

Comes bundled with other software (but you can opt out).

No «move» option for duplicate files (just «delete»).

There are lots of programs out there that can search for files, but not all of them are made to find duplicate files. This program from Auslogics, aptly called Duplicate File Finder, does just that.

It’s really easy for a hard drive to become overwhelmed with videos and music since those types of files take up lots of space. It’s also simple to accidentally download music you already have, and if you suspect you’ve done that, or that you have old backups you no longer need, a duplicate file finder can clean up the copies.

This file search program can look for duplicates of all file types, or you can pick just images, audio files, videos, archives, and/or application files.

After you pick the file type to look for, the search criteria page lets you specify some settings to make the search really customized. You can ignore files smaller and/or larger than a certain size, ignore file names and file dates, ignore hidden files, and search for files that have certain words in the file name. All of these settings are optional.

You can also specify what should happen to the duplicates that you delete: send them to the Recycle Bin, store them in the built-in Rescue Center in case you want them again later, or delete them permanently.

When it’s time to delete the files, you can sort the duplicates by name, path, size, and date modified. The program automatically selects one of the duplicates so that deleting is just a couple of buttons away.

Be sure to decline any third-party software offers during installation if you only want the file search tool.