Windows crappy search... Help!

[FlangeMonkey]

Hi Guys,

Let me just rant for a moment... I absolutely hate what Microsoft did with the search/indexing features from Vista onwards. Lets face it they broke it... I have never been able to get the same functionality out of search that XP had.

Rant over... So its been a while since I needed to search for file contents of many files on windows, I'm now needing to search a large amount of JS, ASPX, CSS, etc. all formats that windows doesn't see as documents.

Anyone know a way to make windows native search every file for content? This is 2012R2 or Windows 8.1.

Your help would be appreciated,

 

[JerryMaxwell]

Try checking out Agent Ransack. It works really well and is much faster than Windows Search and it is Free.

 

[drescherjm]

Let me just rant for a moment... I absolutely hate what Microsoft did with the search/indexing features from Vista onwards. Lets face it they broke it... I have never been able to get the same functionality out of search that XP had.

I agree. It seemed to get worse and worse each release..

Anyways for text files I usually use the search that is in Notepad++ and for the most part avoid the windows search.

 

[FlangeMonkey]

Thanks for the suggestion. Its on a server so I don't want to install anything, but I will check it out.

 

[Ur_Mom]

I'm just getting into Powershell, but I did find this - http://dereknewton.com/2010/12/powershell-grep-equivalent/

Similar to grep in Linux. You can search file contents easily.

I just bookmarked this myself, as it will come in handy!

 

[FlangeMonkey]

I'm just getting into Powershell, but I did find this - http://dereknewton.com/2010/12/powershell-grep-equivalent/

Similar to grep in Linux. You can search file contents easily.

I just bookmarked this myself, as it will come in handy!

Love Powershell, didn't know about it, awesome, THANKS!

 

[drakken]

the other thing to try is locate 32 but it may not work as well as it used to with all the changes made to windows 7 and later.

 

[B00nie]

There's also an app called 'everything' that will index all your files and enable an instant search.

 

[Megalith]

There's also an app called 'everything' that will index all your files and enable an instant search.

Wow, this is fucking amazing. Why is the Windows Search dog shit in comparison?

 

[SuperSubZero]

Have we tried 'content:whatever' in an Explorer search box?

 

[Tawnos]

Have you tried findstr from the command line? It can do recursive directory searches and supports regular expressions.

 

[B00nie]

Wow, this is fucking amazing. Why is the Windows Search dog shit in comparison?

That you have to ask from MS developers I guess.

 

[cortexodus]

You might want to check out Sublime Text as well. I use it daily at home and work. You can , for instance, drop a folder into it, then do a search across the contents of every file in that folder/subfolders using a regex.

 

[Snufykat]

There's also an app called 'everything' that will index all your files and enable an instant search.

That one works very well.