Searching for texts in selected locations or directories

[chicharon]

How do I employ a search for text/s in selected locations or directories? One more thing, how do I type the letter ñ and Ñ in Atlantis? I can't seem to do it ... alt 164 and alt 165 don't seem to work! Help!

[admin]

Sorry, but you cannot search files on your hard disk with Atlantis. There is no corresponding feature in Atlantis. Please use the Search feature of Windows. Most file managers also offer such a feature.

When using the Alt+NNN method, please make sure that the Num Lock mode is active (press the Num Lock key if the Num Lock indicator is not highlighted on your keyboard).
Please click here for information on inserting characters not available directly through the keyboard:
http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en ... ps_012.htm

[oop]

re: Sorry, but you cannot search files on your hard disk with Atlantis. There is no corresponding feature in Atlantis. Please use the Search feature of Windows. Most file managers also offer such a feature.

Any suggestions on a specific file manager that does that?

I don't need any other file management features, and would prefer something without a lot of other options, but with the ability to search the current folder and all its sub-folders for a specified text string, like I used to do with Explorer in Windows 2000 (I'm using Vista now).

This is not an Atlantis issue, of course. I just thought Atlantis users might know about something like this.

[Robert]

You could use the native Windows Search feature in Vista (make sure you install all appropriate iFilters). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Search for details.

HTH.
Cheers,
Robert

[oop]

Thanks, Robert. I didn't know about that. The Search box at the top of each folder looks like it's at least intended to do what I want, as long as I type the search string in quotes.

But it seems to limit the search to files with certain known filename extensions, even though I've selected "All," and even if I check "Include non-indexed, hidden and system files" and "Include system directories" and "Include compressed files," and both with and without indexing enabled. It doesn't tell me it's excluding any filename extensions, and it doesn't give me a choice as to which extensions to exclude; but it consistently fails to find text strings that I've copied and pasted into the search box from text files that are in the target folder but that have unorthodox extensions.

Also, it gives false positive results with HTML files. It routinely finds a few HTML files for which an internal search of the page and its source doesn't find the string I was looking for.

In Windows 2000, the default procedure was to search all files, regardless of type or extension, for an exact string, without added quotes; and it never gave false positive results. I know Vista is just trying to be helpful, but I'd rather have a small shareware app that searches the simple old-fashioned way.

[Robert]

You could try your luck with any of the following software:

“SearchMyFiles” (free – http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/search_my_files.html) Here is from the “NirSoft” site:

SearchMyFiles is an alternative to the standard "Search For Files And Folders" module of Windows. It allows you to easily search files in your system by wildcard, by last modified/created/last accessed time, by file attributes, by file content (text or binary search), and by the file size. SearchMyFiles allows you to make a very accurate search that cannot be done with Windows search. For Example: You can search all files created in the last 10 minutes with size between 500 and 700 bytes.
After you made a search, you can select one or more files, and save the list into text/html/csv/xml file, or copy the list to the clipboard.
SearchMyFiles is portable, and you can use it from a USB flash drive without leaving traces in the Registry of the scanned computer.

“DocFetcher” (free and OpenSource - http://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html)
“InSight Desktop Search” (free - http://www.insightdesktopsearch.com/)
“LookDisk” (free - http://www.fxsearch.com/ldw_eng/)
“DK Finder” (free – http://www.dkellner.hu/freeware/finder/)
“Copernic Desktop Search” (free for home use - http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop-search/)

HTH.
Cheers,
Robert

[oop]

Thanks, Robert! SearchMyFiles does what I want.

[wood.22mark]

Didn't like the nirsoft. DocFetcher worked well, but the parent site for DocFetcher wouldn't download for me. CNET provided a working copy, though.