So I might soon be getting a new comptuer at work – with Windows 7. The only thing I will miss about XP is that I do not know how to search the contents of files in a directory using the Search feature. In XP this is pretty easy, however, searching the web it seems that many others have run into this limitation as well and none have received a satisfactory answer.
So is there an easy way to look for text within files using Windows 7 (and not just file names?)
The magic word here is ‘grep’, the name of the Unix utility that does this. The first thing a google search of ‘windows grep’ brings up is this likely-looking utility. StackOverflow, a programmer discussion site, has a discussion about this as well.
Windows 7 has a search box in the upper right-hand corner of Windows Explorer. I just open up a folder and type something into the search box and hit enter. The search tool tends to show me more than I would like (for example it will list folder names as well as documents in the results) but it works and it’s pretty fast.
I dont know if Im missing anything but when I search something it automatically checks the contents of text files for my search terms.
The findstr command can be used to reliably and flexibly search within file contents without installing any third-party software.
Yeah, I can confirm that just clicking the windows “Start” button in the lower left corner, then typing whatever text term you’re searching for, will result in documents/files that contain that term, rather than just file names.
Same thing happens if you go to Documents and do a search there or in a more specific subfolder.
What happens when you try this, Ludovic?