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Getting Explorer to Search All Files for Text

Many (most?) of you may have run into the problem where you use Windows Explorer to search a file for text the YOU KNOW IS IN THERE BUT $%^@# WINDOWS CAN’T FIND IT – grrrrrrr

Here is how you get it to do that, straight from Microsoft (method 2):

1. Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files or Folders).
2. Click Change preferences, and then click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches).
3. Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). Note that you do not have to turn on the Index service.
4. On the toolbar, click Show/Hide Console Tree.
5. In the left pane, right-click Indexing Service on Local Machine, and then click Properties.
6. On the Generation tab, click to select the Index files with unknown extensions check box, and then click OK.
7. Close the Indexing Service console.

Also – I have just installed Google Desktop because that is supposed to do it ‘out of the box’ and I like Google

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One response to “Getting Explorer to Search All Files for Text”

  1. George Ali Blackburn Avatar
    George Ali Blackburn

    Thanks Art, I had a found a registry hack to get by this, but it was only per file extension, so at least this covers everything.
    One thing regarding step 6. If “Index files with unknown extensions” is disabled, uncheck the box below it which says “Inherit above settings from Service”.

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