Searching for a particular document containing certain words or phrases by scanning through each file yourself, can be both time consuming and frustrating. 
Why not save yourself some time by using the search function in Explorer.
To search for words within files on Windows 7 follow these instructions: • Open windows explorer • Using the left hand file menu select the folder to search in • Find the search box in the top right hand corner of the explorer window • In the search box type content: followed by the word or phrase you are searching for.(eg content:yourword) • To narrow down the search it is best to include a file type (eg.doc,.xls). To do this, add the word file: followed by the file type.
(eg file:*.doc) • This will bring up all word documents within that folder that have the word or phrase you are looking for. From here you may select the document that you wish to open.
I've never been a fan of the search facility that's built into Windows. It doesn't always find what I'm looking for.
How to Search for Text Inside of Any File Using Windows Search Justin Garrison December 5, 2011, 6:00am EDT Many of us rely on Windows Search to find files and launch programs, but searching for text within files is limited to specific file types by default. To search only your documents, click Documents when you open File Explorer. This search will run slowly because the computer will also look on the Internet if you are using the Microsoft OneDrive or Google Docs. For example, if you have a long text document, the find shortcut will scan your entire document for the keyword and this works in Notepad, MSWord and any other text editor you may be using. Two factor authentication office 365 outlook 2016 for mac. If you are in need of searching a document, give this shortcut a try. To search by file type, use the word “kind” and the file type. For example, type “kind:folders” or “kind:audio”. To show the location of a file on your Mac, choose the file from the results list, then p. Find the search box in the top right hand corner of the explorer window In the search box type content: followed by the word or phrase you are searching for.(eg content:yourword ) To narrow down the search it is best to include a file type (eg.doc,.xls).
How Do I Search All Document For Keywords On Mac
Plus, if you want to be able to search the full text of all your files, rather than just the filenames themselves, you need to turn on indexing. Which slows down your computer and takes up valuable hard disk space.
Which is fine if you use the search feature a lot, but not so useful if it's something you need only rarely. My preferred solution for those moments where I need to search all the files on my hard disk for a specific word or phrase is a program such as 'grep'. Grep is a well-known command that's built into Linux and Unix, but isn't part of Windows. There are, though, a handful of free versions that do a pretty good job. One that I've used over the past few days is Astro Grep, which you can find at. It's a tiny 0.2 MB download, works on Windows XP and above, and is portable so it needs no installation. It's also malware-free according to Web of Trust and VirusTotal.
To use it, extract the downloaded zip file and then run the.EXE file that's included. Enter the search path (ie, the folder from which you want to start searching), as well as the file spec that you want to search and the text you're looking for. Outlook apps for office 2016 for mac update. Because grep programs don't create an index beforehand, searching can take a good few minutes, so make sure you narrow down the program's workload by specifying a suitable search path. For example, if you know that what you're looking for is somewhere within MyDocuments, make sure you say so. Once you've entered all the required data, just wait as your search hits gradually begin to appear. That's really all there is to it.
Elastic Search All Documents
So now there's no longer any excuse to say 'I know that document is somewhere, but I just can't remember where'. So long as you can recall a couple of words from it, Astro Grep will find it. Please rate this article. This really is the dogs blox!!! I've just tried it to search through some chat history files from aim and msn going back to 2007 and it found dozens of instances in just a couple of minutes! Koolbrew.you're right Windows has a built in search, and it's also accessible on Windows 7 by Win+F.