Non-discriminating file viewer program

[Dash]

****UPDATE****

I have lost text files somewhere in my computer. Among millions of folders and other text files. I forgot the name I gave for the file. I have spent the last two days clicking and looking into text files, one by one, among thousands of files, images, text, porn and folders.

What I would like to ask is, is there a program that can do a search for a word or phrase in a text file, among a thousand text files? Like, say you wrote the word "heaven" in a text file, NOT as the name of the file itself, but the word inside the text or letter of the file? Is that possible? Is there a program that can look into text files, searching and scanning inside the contents of every text file for a specific word, among all the text files in the computer, itself?

Also, another question I have.

My question is, I would like to have a viewer that can "slideshow" quickly from one microsoft word text file to another, to find the appropriate file, among image and other text files also, to be looked at, at high speed glances into the file.



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I lost some text files among a whole mess of folders on my computer. Now its among a million files. I need a viewer program that can translate and view every kind of file. Every image extension file and every word extention file? cause I need a program that doesn't skip or discriminate when it views files in folders.

Anyone know a good all-seeing, all-translating file viewing program?

___

 

[Cashanova]

I have never used it, but how about Windows Desktop Search?

 

[juanbrujo]

In Windows Vista you have the search function which lets you find words inside files and also lets you preview the "inside" of a file.

Alternatively, you can download Google Desktop to search for files and specific words inside files:

http://desktop.google.com/

Or Windows Desktop Search:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/default.mspx

 

[osanowo]

Actually you don't need to install any software... if you have windows XP it is already in it.

If you select the windows search (windows key + F), then select "All files and folders":

In the field "All or part of the filename" you can make a partial search to speed up the process, such as ".txt" for text file or "*.doc" for word documents... etc...

Then in the next field you can enter the string you want to find inside the file.

Finally you can select in "look in" the directory to search so that it does not search the whole computer.



A/R to your slideshow problem, I really have no clue about a software that would read both. I guess my pic would be to sort the folder by file extensions and then open all the word documents at once with a global selection...

 

[juanbrujo]

Actually you don't need to install any software... if you have windows XP it is already in it.

If you select the windows search (windows key + F), then select "All files and folders":

In the field "All or part of the filename" you can make a partial search to speed up the process, such as ".txt" for text file or "*.doc" for word documents... etc...

Then in the next field you can enter the string you want to find inside the file.

Finally you can select in "look in" the directory to search so that it does not search the whole computer.



A/R to your slideshow problem, I really have no clue about a software that would read both. I guess my pic would be to sort the folder by file extensions and then open all the word documents at once with a global selection...

Windows XP has a known issue for not finding a number of File Types when you do a Search for Files "containing text" or using the "A word or phrase in the file" option. This can be remedied for many file types, but not all. The cause is the lack of a PersistentHandler value in the Registry for this type of file.

You can correct this by clicking Start, Run and entering REGEDIT Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and locating the entry for the file type in question. For example, .txt, .adm, .asp. Expand the branch for that file type, and if the PersistentHandler subkey does not exist, create it. Do this by clicking on the file extension key and going to Edit, New, Key. Name the Key, PersistentHandler. Click on the PersistentHandler sub-key. In Regedit's right pane, double click on the Default value and enter the following (copy and paste may be your best bet):

{5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}

If the PersistentHandler sub-key does exist, do not change the default value. This could have very undesired consequences.

Close Regedit and reboot the computer. This file type will now be searched for "A word or phrase in the file" type searches.

Reboot.

Many use a program called Agent Ransack, http://www.agentransack.com, to work around Windows XP's Search limitations.