When you converse with Linux users, they often start praising the search features present in Linux and make the Windows operating system look bad. But they do not know that Windows has also evolved to have very strong search and indexing features. And if you do not really like the Windows search features, then you can use many free file searching software like Everything, Hddb or FileSearchy. The FileSearchy search utility for Windows not only presents you with very fast search features, but it also has in-content search features that enable you to search for a string inside documents and text files. It can look for a keyword inside Microsoft office documents, PDF files, text files and other types of documents.
The FileSearchy program is available for both the 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows and supports all versions of Windows starting from XP to Windows 8.1. The program keeps running in the background and maintains a small index database for all the files on your hard disk in order to facilitate the blazing fast file search.
As you launch the program, it presents you with a simple instant file searching interface. You have to type in a keyword for the filename. As soon as you type, it populates the list with all the files having that keyword in the file name. You can use wild cards, plain text and regular expressions as the keyword. I looked up for all the JPG files on my computer using the wild card *.JPG and it listed 6,880 files on all partitions in less than 1 second which is very impressive. The FileSearchy utility really puts Windows’ in-built search tool to shame.
If you want to search for a keyword inside the file contents, then you have to switch to the advanced search section where you can choose folder to search, whether to search inside sub-folders and the string to look for in the files. The search results are very fast and display the occurrence of the string in the files. The string is highlighted using yellow color so that you can find the information easily.
In the FileSearchy options, you can choose to auto-start FileSearchy with Windows, run it in background, integrate it with Windows File Explorer, configure Windows to skip UAC prompt for FileSearchy, manage the indexed files database, choose in-content search handlers for different types of files and more.
Conclusion: FileSearchy for Windows is a super blazing fast file search utility that also offers great in-content search for many popular files. It can automatically skip binary files when performing the in-content search to speed up the search.
You can download FileSearchy from http://www.filesearchy.com/.