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[Nickbat]

In good old WinXP – and all prior Win versions – one could easily search for text within files. This function lies, I would have thought, at the basis of computing: the ability to find something fast within trillions of lines of code. Tonight, as part of my day job, I tried to find a phrase which I knew had been translated into Spanish at some time in the past. Could I find it? No. In Win 7, the default setting is searching for file names in folders. Well, if I knew the file, I'd be able to find what I was looking for.

To look through folders, you have to "index" them. What's that about? I don't know which folder it was in! 

All I want to do is be able to search a disk for a text string. Is that so hard? For Win 7 Ultimate, it clearly is.

Grrr.     

[feeutfo]

Bring back Bill Gates. mmmm Billy boy.

[aaronjb]

# find / -exec grep -H -n 'Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition' {} \;


Oh.. wait, Windows. There's always Cygwin, I suppose.

[Sir Tigger KC]

Never mind Nick, put the kettle on and have a nice cuppa tea! 

[Varche]

In good old WinXP – and all prior Win versions – one could easily search for text within files. This function lies, I would have thought, at the basis of computing: the ability to find something fast within trillions of lines of code. Tonight, as part of my day job, I tried to find a phrase which I knew had been translated into Spanish at some time in the past. Could I find it? No. In Win 7, the default setting is searching for file names in folders. Well, if I knew the file, I'd be able to find what I was looking for.

To look through folders, you have to "index" them. What's that about? I don't know which folder it was in! 

All I want to do is be able to search a disk for a text string. Is that so hard? For Win 7 Ultimate, it clearly is.

Grrr.     

It is there, just remove your "EU" filter and you will find it!!

sent from my huckleberry APod nanny with chucklebags running on Win95

[cem_devecioglu]

this may help
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/in-windows-7-i-want-to-search-for-all-files/aadfe1f1-4a33-406b-8e72-bb920efa4f30

[Kevin Wood]

this may help
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-files/in-windows-7-i-want-to-search-for-all-files/aadfe1f1-4a33-406b-8e72-bb920efa4f30

Talk about a faff! So glad they've "improved" it so much since XP. Still, think of all that eye candy.

[cleggy]

I could write assembler code, tune, tear apart, fix and rebuild IBM MVS/JES3 operating systems on trio of 370 machines, as a Systems Engineer mind you it was 1978. Now I ain't got a clue, and I guess Microsoft won't let me have logic manuals and source code.
You all have it too easy.  

[kully]

If I want to find mention of the word 'omega' in all .txt files I would

> find "omega" *.txt

or if case does not matter

> find /i "omega" *.txt

add '| more' if you want to view one page of results at a time

or leave off the '*.txt' if you want to search all files.

[kully]

I'd recommend getting the free (and excellent) Notepad++, not only is a great editor it also has find-in-files support built-in.

[zirk]

In good old WinXP – and all prior Win versions – one could easily search for text within files. This function lies, I would have thought, at the basis of computing: the ability to find something fast within trillions of lines of code. Tonight, as part of my day job, I tried to find a phrase which I knew had been translated into Spanish at some time in the past. Could I find it? No. In Win 7, the default setting is searching for file names in folders. Well, if I knew the file, I'd be able to find what I was looking for.

To look through folders, you have to "index" them. What's that about? I don't know which folder it was in! 

All I want to do is be able to search a disk for a text string. Is that so hard? For Win 7 Ultimate, it clearly is.

Grrr.     

Try this Nick, Win 7,

Search Box, 'My Text Word', wait, click- See More Results, brings up New Window, top right box = My Text Word, click on this, brings up filters, date size kind etc, click Kind, then click type, ie email, document / Note / picture etc.

Hope it helps.

[cem_devecioglu]

I could write assembler code, tune, tear apart, fix and rebuild IBM MVS/JES3 operating systems on trio of 370 machines, as a Systems Engineer mind you it was 1978. Now I ain't got a clue, and I guess Microsoft won't let me have logic manuals and source code.
You all have it too easy.

nowadays even mobiles have more complex coding techniques.. those days are long gone..
 
besides there is no need for those huge machines , even an old model pc is capable of handling manyX times of calculating power.. when I was working for a bank, I was able to beat the manframe on a 2 processor simple raid system during 3d cube calculations.. (later microsoft called them OLAP)
 
ps: the mainframe programmer was unaware of 3d matrices.. 
 
 

[cleggy]

I could write assembler code, tune, tear apart, fix and rebuild IBM MVS/JES3 operating systems on trio of 370 machines, as a Systems Engineer mind you it was 1978. Now I ain't got a clue, and I guess Microsoft won't let me have logic manuals and source code.
You all have it too easy.

nowadays even mobiles have more complex coding techniques.. those days are long gone..
besides there is no need for those huge machines , even an old model pc is capable of handling manyX times of calculating power.. when I was working for a bank, I was able to beat the manframe on a 2 processor simple raid system during 3d cube calculations.. (later microsoft called them OLAP)
 
ps: the mainframe programmer was unaware of 3d matrices.. 

I know, I feel old trying to remember, a 370/158 was the first 1mip CPU in 1973 and was huge 
All we had were dumb terminals accessing the mainrame. When PC's first came out we called them 'Toys & Novelties'

[Nickbat]

Thanks for the tips, Guys.

Unfortunately, I tried one suggestion which was to get Win7 to index contents as well as file types. BIG mistake. The PC slowed down to an absolute crawl and I've wasted several hours of work time trying to correct it. Have switched it off for now while I finish my jobs. What an absolute pain. 

Incidentally, if you read the comments under the link that Cem provided, you'll see that this change to the search facility has made people seriously pi**ed off. 

[TheBoy]

No trouble in searching within files here on Vista/W7. I do it all the time. And I do NOT index files.

Please read the manual