How do I make Windows XP find these files?

Factual Questions
1

Many years ago, a friend with a lot of time on his hands created a set of recipe textfiles for us. We’re talking hundreds of recipes, possibly thousands. Each file had an alphanumeric name in the form of AAAX, based on a coded system of criteria (so, for instance, salad [A] that happened contain seafood [E] in the form of shrimp [S], might be called AES1).

The files were all in individual directories and sub-directories – A for salads, B for soups, C for stews, etc. If I knew what the recipe called for, I could consult the key and open up the files that met my criteria until I found the one I was looking for. That’s when I was using DOS (which I did for an alarmingly long time).

When I started using Windows, I imported the system into my new computer, and the recipe searches were simplified: I simply used the search function to target the Recipes folders, and hunt for any file that had the keywords I would expect to find in the recipe I wanted (by specifying “a word or phrase in the file”). This method served me well through Windows 3.1, Win95, Win98 and Win2000.

Now I’m using WinXP, and it Just. Won’t. Work. I set up my search criteria the way I always have; say, tell it to find file, check the Recipes folder, and hunt for the file that contains the phrase Pork Chop Bake.

Search is complete. There are no results to display.

Well, maybe I didn’t call it that. Let’s try “Pork Chop.”

Search is complete. There are no results to display.

Pork?

Search is complete. There are no results to display.

Let’s just see who’s kidding whom. Using Windows Explorer, I pick a file at random and open it with Notepad (where the hell did Wordpad go? Isn’t that standard with Windows? oh, well). Beef Tenderloin.

Well let’s look for a file with the word “Tenderloin.”

Search is complete. There are no results to display.

What’s going on? Why can’t the Windows “Search” function find a simple ANSI textfile? And does anyone have any idea how I can beat this OS into submission and bend it to my will?

Thanks in advance for any insights into the problem/potential solutions.

2

It works for me. Can you maybe post detailed repro steps so we can follow specifically what you’re doing?

3

Not sure, but i always found the standard search feature that comes with WinXP to be absolutely hopeless. If you 're using that basic search function, you’d be much better off installing a proper desktop search tool.

There’s Microsoft’s own Windows Search, or you could try Desktop Search by Copernic or Google Desktop.

These search tools will index your files so that each search does not have to go through every single file anew, but instead will search the index. I’ve been using Copernic for a few years now, and it works a treat.

4

mail the whole thing to your self and let google sort them out:)

5

You went to options and told XP to search within files, right?

6

Are these plain text files? Do they have the TXT extension?

I have similar problems because some of my old files were coded on a system like yours, where the 8-character file name told me about the contents of the file, and the 3-char extension identified the source where I got the info from. The result was that I have all sorts of file extensions, none of which are TXT or DOC or WPD or any other thing that XP recognizes.

I think that Windows Search deliberately ignores any file with an unknown extension, because it wants to save time, and so it presumes that these weirdo files are programs or other coded stuff, and in any case would not have any sort of text that you’re looking for.

I don’t remember how to tell XP to search even these sort of files. I don’t even remember if there is a way to do that. But I’ll bet that if you rename your files to have a .txt extension, then it will start working.

7

And if you want a search tool that really works even under XP but doesn’t bother with all of that pre-indexing stuff, I find Agent Ransack quite good.

What I’ve found about the xp search tool was that if it doesn’t recognize the file type or it’s not a common document format, it either doesn’t search inside or the search inside usually doesn’t work right.

8

I second Agent Ransack. It has a bunch of features you’ll never use, but you can ignore them easily, and it will find your files.

You might be using Microsoft’s new “Windows Search”, which in my experience has never found a file, ever.
The older Search Companion is better, but will still ignore files in certain circumstances, the specifics of which I forget.

9

Keeve is right. Starting at XP, Windows Explorer search ignores files with extensions it doesn’t “recognize”. If your files have some weird extension (i.e. not .txt, .doc, .xls, etc.) it probably isn’t looking at them. You could rename the files, or I have a feeling you might be able to fix it by associating your extension with an application (e.g. Notepad). It might look at them then.

10

On the Wordpad front. I think you’ll find it hidden away under ‘Accessories’ on the start list. Though I think XP Notepad has most of the same facilities.

11

That occurred to me, too. Is the OP absolutely sure he typed his search string in the box captioned “A word or phrase in the file” and not in the box just above it, captioned “All or part of the file name”? I’ve done that a couple of times myself, but I realized it very quickly. Always check the obvious.

12

As others have mentioned, this is a known problem in XP. This article has some potential fixes.

If you aren’t afraid of the command line, you could also use the FINDSTR command. This will search within all file types, so you could use a command like this:


findstr /S /I /C:"pork chop" "c:\recipe files\*.*"
13

There are a few factors at work, here. One thing you have to do is tell Windows to include the directory in the search index. You can do this from the Property setting for the folder in Explorer. Another might be the extension, as mentioned above. Microsoft’s idea was that people would write custom filters for their proprietary file formats, so Windows only comes with a few basic ones (text, RTF & MS-Office, IIRC). If the files don’t have a recognized extension, the search indexer won’t include them.

Write/WordPad is included with all current versions of Windows. It’s even getting a revamp in Windows 7 with tool ribbons. Whether that’s a good thing or not is still debatable.

14

Install the Microsoft XP power toy TweakUI and select “Use Classic Search in Explorer” from the “Explorer” menu.