Searching for @gmail in windows

[Sayth]

Okay so I think I found the first bit of help that literally can't be Googled!

I need to find all files in a folder in my documents (XP-SP3) that contain the phrase @gmail but windows search companion (no I don't normally install that horrible windows search 4.0) won't accept the @ symbol and adding quotation marks ("@gmail") yeilds no results even though I clearly know there are files in there with that word.

So try searching for help in google? Can't do it. Google drops any punctuation including @. I tried advanced search, tried "@" and nothing works. no results for queries with "at symbol" or "@ sign". Bing is the same.

If I weren't doing this via RDP, I'd copy the entire folder over to my Fedora box and run the search there. Would be SO fast!

Boss kinda needs these files ASAP... I'll keep looking. Maybe Yahoo search will work? Any advice is greatly appreciated! I'm stressing out here.

 

[gimp]

well.. you can't use the @ symbol in a file name.
So, are you sure you're trying to search the body of the document, not just the filename?

I've barely used the Search Companion myself... but I never did like it.

 

[Sayth]

Searching the body of the document. and yeah I'm using the "find words or phrases inside a file" and it errors out with "The indexing service query you entered cannot be completed successfully because the volumes you have specified are not indexed"

Which duh... I don't use indexing. But if I remove the @ symbol, it will pull up the dozens (if not hundreds) of documents containing gmail, but that won't work as I'm looking sppecifically for the ones containing an email address for gmail.

Still looking

 

[gimp]

hm.. even the regular Search does that.

and even after I did enable the Indexing Service, I still get a "One or more Indexing Service query parameteres are incorrect." error if I try to search for @gmail.com

maybe try "*@gmail.com"?

edit: scratch that. Searcing the body of a document for *@gmail.com will look for that asterick. And just using @gmail.com doesn't work. Why not just use gmail.com ?

 

[Sayth]

Can't use just gmail.com cause there are too many files simply referring to gmail.com.

But I think I found it. In command prompt I tried:

findstr /s/i/m "@gmail" {directory} *

i = don't match case
s = subdirectories
m = file name only (don't display the line it's contained in)

I get results but I need to put it in a text file so I can manage the output. Redirecting to a txt file with ">" doesn't work though so I will try to find a way to do it. Got some slack from the boss so I can give it a try tomorrow.

Thanks for the help! I hope this will help someone else in the future! Too bad they're have a hell of a time searching for it. Time for some COD:MW2 now!