Working with thousands of files per session is no easy task. Besides the management challenges, sometimes you only remember a file by a small fragment of its text or a single keyword. The impressive SearchMyFiles from NirSoft (which we examined last year) has reached version 3.0, and it now includes a function to search files by the text written in them, extending support to Office documents and PDF files.
The usefulness of search engines depends entirely on the quality of their results. The integrated Windows search is known for its poor performance, but it can easily be replaced. Other environments are far more complex. For example, Deep Web search engines must adapt to their chaotic nature, which they don't always achieve. On more than one occasion, we have wondered how search engines in general could be improved, and that doubt leads us to SearchMyFiles.
How to Search Files by Content with SearchMyFiles
The classic NirSoft search tool has been around for a while, and we appreciate it not only for its effectiveness but also for its lightweight profile (<250 kilobytes). The new build of SearchMyFiles raises its version number to 3.0, and it brings a small novelty: searching files by the text written in them. This function extends its compatibility to Office documents and PDF files, a format that is often ignored by traditional search engines.
The developer explains that this is possible as long as Windows search handlers take care of those formats. In the specific case of PDF files, there are two options: the official Microsoft handler (Windows.Data.pdf.dll), or the Adobe PDF iFilter. If you are on Windows 10, chances are you don't need to do anything to take advantage of this new function. Just remember to activate the checkbox "Use Windows search handlers to find text inside Microsoft Office documents and other file types" before starting the search.
The rest has not changed at all. SearchMyFiles still allows filtering results by date and time, file attributes, and size. It also supports multiple wildcards, limits for subfolder depth, and searching through NTFS symbolic links.
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