I have a question about Get Find/Search Advance Option - containing text...:

Whenever I perform Explorer's advanced search, where I include some text to find within the file(s) listed - it usually never finds any files to satisfy my request. I've tested it with searches that should have returned some known files. I have search *.txt and it has worked with those. Using *.dat (text or binary files) for example - always fails. Is there a limitation on file types that I'm not aware of ?

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If you are searching for a specific word or phrase, you will do better searching all files. You won't find anything in *.dat or other system or hidden files unless you specify those in advanced search features. I hear bad comments on search, but it always works for me. Takes a little more setup than W98 but does all the same things.

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I am experiencing the exact same behaviour that Michael Fowler reports: when searching for files containing some text, I do get hits in *.txt files, but not in (for example) *.java, *.xml, *.xsl etc. I have tried various tips I found on the web (such as adding a "plain text" PersistentHandler key to these extensions in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, and adding the extensions to the file lcldocs.xml) but nothing seems to work. Apparently Microsoft wants me to rename these files to have a *.txt extension, because doing so suddenly returns hits in them as well. I am totally amazed at this behaviour, that even setting "Use Classic Search In Explorer" in TweakUI does not seem to fix. It does not take rocket science to know that these filetypes are not binaries (assuming for a brief moment that you would not want content searching on such files). Even in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT they are reported with "PerceivedType"="text". Does anyone know how to disable this annoying "feature"?


On Friday, February 21, 2003 at 8:40 pm, Tom Swanson wrote:
>If you are searching for a specific word or phrase, you will do better searching
>all files. You won't find anything in *.dat or other system or hidden files unless
>you specify those in advanced search features. I hear bad comments on search, but
>it always works for me. Takes a little more setup than W98 but does all the same
>things.

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Here's the solution: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309173

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Seems to me, that what Microsoft are saying in their solution is that "we decided to 'improve searching' by only looking in file we recognize". Somehow they have ignored the fact that there are many cases when you want to look up phrases in other places than .TXT and Office files. I for instance have found that SEARCH won't look into Microsoft Works 4.x files properly!!! How did they miss this on initial release.

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I don't know what the smoked in Redmond when they decided to spend time on providing animated toys in the search dialog instead of letting users search for all stuff they want. It's times like these the Linux folks are just laughing at us. /Sam


On Monday, May 12, 2003 at 4:34 pm, Simon Carter wrote:
>Seems to me, that what Microsoft are saying in their solution is that "we decided
>to 'improve searching' by only looking in file we recognize". Somehow they have ignored
>the fact that there are many cases when you want to look up phrases in other places
>than .TXT and Office files. I for instance have found that SEARCH won't look into
>Microsoft Works 4.x files properly!!!
>How did they miss this on initial release.

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Thanks for the pointer! One of my coworkers was having this problem, and you enabled me to solve it for him.


On Thursday, April 24, 2003 at 7:21 am, Brent Corkum wrote:
>Here's the solution:
>
>http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309173

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If you're on XP, this solution worked for me:

1. Click Start, and then click Search (or point to Search, and then click For Files 
or Folders).
 
2. Click Search Options, and then click Indexing Service.
 
3. Click 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.
 
(Paraphrased from http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309173)

Hope this helps!






On Friday, February 21, 2003 at 7:36 am, Michael Fowler wrote:

>I have a question about Get 

>Find/Search Advance Option - containing text...:


>

>Whenever I perform Explorer's advanced search, where I include some text to find 

>within the file(s) listed - it usually never finds any files to satisfy my request. 

> I've tested it with searches that should have returned some known files.  I have 

>search *.txt and it  has worked with those. Using *.dat (text or binary files) for 

>example - always fails.  Is there a limitation on file types that I'm not aware 
of 

>?

>
 

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