Windows XP Search does not find text in files: Why?

[prowsej]

I am doing a search using the Windows XP search feature. I am searching in a directory, searching for a "word or phrase in the file". This directory contains Microsoft Word files. I use Word 2003. I know that the word I am searching for is in several of the files in the directory. When I do the search, it does not yield any results. I do not have any other limits on on the search the would prevent the document from showing up (such as date or file size).

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I read at one point about Win XP's search being different from previous versions of Windows' and requiring some special file filter for the search so that I knows what parts of the file to search. I'm not sure if this is true, but even if it is I assume that Microsoft would include them by default for its own files.

 

[mikecel79]

You need to turn on the index server for this to work. Do a search in the help file for XP on Index server and it will show you how to turn it on. Once it's on let it build a catalog of your files and you'll be able to do a search within certain files.

 

[prowsej]

I'll turn it on and see if it works. I thought that it just increased the speed with which I could do full-text searches, and didn't know that it was a prerequisite for doing them.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: prowsej
I'll turn it on and see if it works. I thought that it just increased the speed with which I could do full-text searches, and didn't know that it was a prerequisite for doing them.

I *think* the search will abort if it thinks the files are not text files (and word files contain binary data). The index service has a parser for .doc files, so it will handle them (and alas, it works). If you try your test with just plain text files it should work even without the index service.

Bill

 

[prowsej]

I've narrowed down the specific problem that I've been having: when I produce a document on my Palm Pilot using "WordSmith", it is saved to my computer with a .doc extension, but in RTF format. These are the documents that are not searchable.

Steps to replicate the problem:
1. Create a file in Microsoft word
2. Save it as an RTF (Rich Text Format) file (.rtf)
3. Manually rename the file to give it a ".doc" instead of a ".rtf" extension
4. Windows search will now not return the text of that file when doing a full text search

I want the text to be returned in just such a case. How can I get this to happen?

Thank you very much.

 

[prowsej]

I found this utility and it has solved my problem http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_filefilter.htm

The default search feature in Windows XP is an abomination! I'm glad that there is a simple way around it.