I needed to look for some invoice numbers in files that were *.edi… I added the file type edi into what is search… and clicked on index properties and contents… and it worked.

Good luck http://www.watchingthenet.com/add-remove-file-types-to-windows-vista-search-index.html

Thanks Pat

If anyone from Microsoft reads this blog, please feel free to comment with a link to a response!

What does Microsoft say about these problems? People say we shoudn’t “expect” features, but search “features” have appeared in advertising material for Windows Vista so it seems like we have every right to expect solutions that work – or our (lots of) money back.

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, it isn’t working for me. I searched for *.doc AND “cherie” on a drive that contained a Word document (.doc extension) with the word “cherie” in it. Vista didn’t find it, even when I enabled the “search non-indexed files” and “search within files” options.

spk

Its slow – even with indexing, and I dont know yet if it gets everything

Having now had a chance to try the suggestions in Josh Stauffer’s post, I see that it isn’t quite what I was after, and neither, I’m afraid, are the other suggestions you’ve made. They’re still helpful in a general sense, and I’m grateful for your having posted them, but I’m afraid they don’t quite address the problem I was blogging about.

The real problem, in my view, is that on-demand searching within files (as opposed to searches using the index) is both harder and less reliable on Vista than on XP (or, for that matter, Windows 2000).

The suggestions you’ve made don’t solve that (though they do solve other issues), so I’m still looking for answers. Why is Vista’s on-demand searching so shoddy, in terms of usability and functionality (did Microsoft fire the Vista search team before they’d finished their job? It sure seems like the underlying code is only half-finished…)? And, what can I, as a user, do to repair it (is there a patch that I’m missing?)?

another tip – you can click ’search tools’ drop down (after you do a search it appears) – then ’search options’.

from there you can select ‘always search filenames and contents’.

Another tip – you need to reboot your machine for a lot of these changes to take effect (or it says restart the service but i cant find that).

Allowing windows to build new indexes in selected locations may also be required.

yes you’re right – its all buried and awkward. Like the snipper tool – handy but only if you know it exists!

Thanks for the link to Josh Stauffer’s post. That’s useful indeed, and I’ll try it out when I have a chance. I wish Microsoft had documented this better.

In the meantime, I’ve been using grep on Vista via cygwin, but it’s a cumbersome solution (firing up a shell and using the command line) compared to XP’s searching behaviour.

http://www.joshstauffer.com/2008/01/search-for-text-inside-of-php-files-with-vista/