Searching for a specific word in a document

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I think that this feature can be enabled, but I forget how to do it. Who can help?

Lou Sander

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For newer versions of Word:

To search for a specific word use Ctrl + F to open the Navigation bar that does the searching.

To Find a specific word and replace that word use Ctrl + H to open the Find and Replace box.

 

HTH, Dana:))

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No! Sorry, I meant a word in one of the files that has been saved to your disk drive. Like you can search for a word in the filename, except that you are searching for a word in the file itself.

Lou Sander

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A guess: Something like “allow files to be indexed on content” in the file indexing selections. May be on the third tab, in File Explorer\View\ – last tab with change options in the pulldown?

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Sorry, misunderstood what you wanted. That is an indexing option.
For Windows 10:
Enter Indexing in the Start menu search box and select Indexing Options above to open that control panel applet.
In the window that opens select Advanced button to open the Advanced Option box.
In the Advanced Options box select the Files Types tab
On the File Types tab select the radio button for Index Properties and File contents.
OK your way out to close windows.
This will take time for Windows to index the files to perform such searches. These are slow searches and will take time.  If you can keep the search to a folder and not the whole PC it will speed up the process.

I would recommend downloading and installing the Everything app, which will perform such searches faster than File Explorer.

Everything

HTH, Dana:))

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I have been a happy user of Everything to search through all the filenames on my drives;  it works very quickly and displays the results in a sensible way..  How do I ask it to search the content inside the  files?

Thank you.

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Alex5723

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I’m a big fan of NirSoft’s SearchMyFiles.

• No need to install anything.
• No need to have files preindexed, you can turn off Windows CPU eating Indexing service.
• Super Fast
• Options galore, but you don’t need to use them all only the ones you need.
• Remember to run as Admin if your searching the C: drive protected folders, i.e. Windows, etc.
• Put a shortcut on your taskbar for quick access

NirSoft Utilities

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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SueW

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AlphaCharlie wrote:

How do I ask it to search the content inside the  files?

Open Everything
Select Search from the top menu and then select Advanced Search… which will open the Advanced Search window as show in the attached PDF image.
The circled portion shows where the word or phase you wish to search for is entered. Can use other filters to narrow the search and speed up the search as even with Everything searches inside files will take longer.

Everything-Advanced-Search

HTH, Dana:))

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access-mdb

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You do need to endeavour to use other filters to help. Everything is very quick when finding files, but if you use indexing (as I do), file manager will be much quicker. I did a compare with searching text with Everything starting from a subfolder and the same text starting from  my top documents folder. The latter was almost instant (and found more instances of the text other folders) whereas Everything was slower (though not by much) and only found the one file (as expected).

I’ll stick with File Manager unless I switch off indexing at some point. This about Everything is useful to know.

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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I use searching the file contents to find a document I saved that has specific text in it I want, but can’t remember the name of the file. Since I keep my documents organized into folders based upon topic my search is usually limited to one or two folders. I really don’t use the Advanced Search window and enter my search directly into the search bar.

Example: I know I have a document in my D:\Documents\Computer How Tos\Windows 10\ that discusses how to delay an upgrade. I would enter in the Search bar of Everything:
“D:\Documents\Computer How Tos\Windows 10\” content:upgrade
The search returns all documents in that folder that contains the word upgrade. The search took 12 seconds and searched 135 documents totaling 84 MB of written text.

Easy to use and fast enough for my needs.

HTH, Dana:))

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I think you’ve proved my point! I wonder how long it would have taken if you had started at D:\Documents. As I said, I have indexing going, and that’s pretty much instant, but if I turned it off, Everything would be my go to app for this sort of search. We’re not all as organised as you!

Another thing I use File Manager for is searching for tags in my photos. All my photos have tags and I can find what I’m looking for very quickly. Does Everything have a similar facility?

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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Everything can filter the search by file type and many attributes within the file’s properties, but I don’t see the ability to search via meta data.  Everything does have a lot of Command line functions which may have those functions in the Command line rather than GUI.

Never used File Manager, but in my situation, Everything meets my needs as I seldom do such content searches and Everything is way faster than Windows File Explorer.  My 32 GBs of photos are organize so I can find a photo really fast without having to do a meta tag search so I have never had a need to do such searches.

HTH, Dana:))

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Explorer will be using Windows indexing. AFAIK, Everything doesn’t index contents, only names.

cheers, Paul

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