XP: Have Windows Perform Word or Phrase Searches within Unknown Filetypes

Contributed by davak May 11, 2005  
Tagged: Windows

By default window search does not search for words or phrases for all filetypes. For programmers (and the rest of us) who have text-like files with odd extensions, this is a pain.

By default windows search only will find words or phrases within files that have a “known” filetype. For anybody that uses text-containing files with nonstandard extensions, windows will not typically search this file.

I run into this all the time when programming. I name my pre-compiled files by odd extensions. Other users may noticed that windows will not search files without an extensions or common extensions such as *.log, *.h, *.xml, *.css. How goofy.

Here’s how to fix it:

1. Click Start
2. Click Search
3. Click Change Preferences
4. Click With Indexing Service (for faster local searches)
5. Click Change Indexing Service Settings (Advanced). You do not have to enable the indexing service.
6. Click the Show/Hide Console Tree button. (It’s does not have a label. It is to the right of the right arrow button and should be under the action menu.)
7. Right-click on Indexing Service on Local Machine
8. Left-click on Properties
9. Select the checkbox with Index files with unknown extensions
10 Click OK
11. Close out the Indexing Service