How to search for text in a notepad document (please read)

[green elephant]

I have around 50-60 folders that all contain notepad documents with text inside of them. Lets say one of the folders contains a notepad document with the text "popcorn". How might I find that particular folder or notepad document (either one. doesn't matter) that contains "popcorn" withjout manually going through every folder/document to find the one with "popcorn"?

This should help you understand if the above wasn't understandable:

Each folder goes like this:
10-12-13 (the date the folder was created)>10-12-13 Pictures (sub folder) and the notepad document. To clarify, the main folder 10-12-13 contains a sub folder and the notepad document. Now we are back to "popcorn". Say i want to find a folder/notepad document with the text "popcorn" in it. How would i do that without manually going through every folder and notepad document?

 

[Kari]

Hi, welcome to the Seven Forums.

Here's how:

• Let's say you have the main folder named 2013, containing subfolders for each month (JAN through DEC), and these subfolders in their turn subfolders for each day
• Open Windows Explorer showing the content of the main folder 2013
• Windows Search includes now the folder 2013 and all its subfolders (Search always searches the folder open in Explorer and everything underneath it)
• Type your search term to Search (top right), telling the Search it should search for file content:
  

  content:popcorn

• The search filter content:search term tells the Search to search the content of all files in all files in current folder and all its subfolders

Read more:

• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/129437-windows-search-configure-use.html
• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/286043-search-find-more-filters-operators.html

Kari

 

[MilesAhead]

If not command line phobic an alternative is to search using a variant of the Linux 'fgrep' command. It has a lot of versatility as to file pattern match, print lines containing or not containing search pattern etc..

If you search freeware sites you can find both command line and Gui implementations and variants of it.

 

[green elephant]

Hi, welcome to the Seven Forums.

Here's how:

• Let's say you have the main folder named 2013, containing subfolders for each month (JAN through DEC), and these subfolders in their turn subfolders for each day
• Open Windows Explorer showing the content of the main folder 2013
• Windows Search includes now the folder 2013 and all its subfolders (Search always searches the folder open in Explorer and everything underneath it)
• Type your search term to Search (top right), telling the Search it should search for file content:
  

  content:popcorn

• The search filter content:search term tells the Search to search the content of all files in all files in current folder and all its subfolders

Read more:

• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/129437-windows-search-configure-use.html
• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/286043-search-find-more-filters-operators.html

Kari

Thank you for the response.
Say one text document includes the text "MSC MELLISA". I type "content:MSC MELLISA" (it comes up with nothing) and I know it IS capitalized in the text document. I then tried "content:MSCMELLISA" still no luck. I then tried plain MSC, and that worked but i have multiple text documents with MSC in it..

 

[Kari]

Try the AND operator:

content:MSC [B][COLOR="DarkRed"]AND [/COLOR][/B]content:Mellisa

Notice that all search operators (AND, OR, NOT) must be in capital letters! (See the Part 3: Operators in tutorial http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/286043-search-find-more-filters-operators.html)

Kari

 

[green elephant]

Try the AND operator:

content:MSC [B][COLOR="DarkRed"]AND [/COLOR][/B]content:Mellisa

Notice that all search operators (AND, OR, NOT) must be in capital letters! (See the Part 3: Operators in tutorial http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/286043-search-find-more-filters-operators.html)

Kari

Well i put in plain content:mellisa and no luck... guess i spelled it wrong in the text document itself or something.. because this code works for other keywords.
Thanks Kari

 

[Kari]

You are welcome!