Nirsoft’s SearchMyFiles has received a major boost. It can now search inside Office documents and PDF’s.
SearchMyFiles is the Windows search tool that should be included with Windows. It’s interface might be old-fashioned but all the options are visible, including some not available in Windows.
Some of the highlights in Search My Files
‘Use Windows search handlers to find text inside Microsoft Office documents and other file types.’
Combine with ‘File Contains … Text’ to see documents or PDF’s with that text.
There’s also a ‘File does NOT contain … option.
Searching inside PDF’s requires either Microsoft’s PDF search handler (Windows.Data.pdf.dll) or Adobe’s PDF iFilter . Most likely one of those is already installed. Installing the latest Adobe Acrobat Reader automatically includes the PDF iFilter.
Search Multiple Values
Combine many searches into one. For example find documents with either Bugs, Daffy, Elmer in one pass.
Find Files or Find Folders
A very useful choice to search file names or folder names.
Scan folders in the following depth
Normally, searches will check either all sub-folders or none. Search My Files gives you control to look n folders deep but no more.
Duplicate Searches
Change the search mode to ‘Duplicate Search’ to find disk space hogging identical file copies.
Non-Duplicates Search
Even better is the reverse of a Duplicate Search.
Non-Duplicates search displays all files that are not duplicated. That’s incredibly useful when trying to merge two folders.
More Duplicate Searches
In Duplicate Names Search Mode, SearchMyFiles displays all files that have the same name with four options
- Duplicate names – Files and Folders
- Duplicate file names only
- Duplicate names with identical content
- Duplicate names with non-identical content
Separate Search results
The search results appear in a separate window. If the current search is giving the wrong results, just change your settings and click Start Search to restart with better filters.
The search results can be saved to clipboard (for pasting into Word or Excel) or saved to text, html, xml or csv (for Excel) file.
Windows old and new
Search My Files works on Windows 10, 8, 7 and all the way back to Windows 2000.
Both 32-bit and 64-bit downloads.
It’s a portable program, no install required. Put the .exe on a USB memory stick, plug into any computer and start searching.
