When you’re a PC user, using windows search is second nature after a while. You can set index options to accurately find any document, picture, or music file you need, which Windows search usually finds.
What many people want to know is whether it is possible for Windows search to find documents through their contents. If you need Windows search to find file content, such as text in cpp, java, HTML, and many other text-based files, you need to add a file extension to the Windows search options.
The following steps will work in a similar way on Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10. Different versions of the screen and window may look slightly different, but the process is the same. To have windows search find the contents of a file, you need to do the following:
- The fastest way to turn on the index option is to search for “index”
- Click the Advanced button
- Then click the file types tab
- In the list showing all file types, select the file type whose contents you want to search
- “How should I index this file?” is displayed at the bottom of the window Select the window that displays the index properties and the contents of the file
- If there is no file extension in the list for which you want to search, you can add it to “add a new extension to the list” at the bottom of the list:The index will then be rebuilt for a while to accommodate the new options in.
Now there should be a Windows search to find the contents of the file. You can also change the folder settings to ensure that when you search in file explorer, the results also show the contents of the file. To do this in Windows 8 and 10, perform the following steps:
- In any file explorer window, click File, and then change the folder and search options
- Click the Search tab, and then check the box next to always search for file names and content
- Click apply, and then click OK