Just 3 seconds! Smart Ways to Search for Files Containing Specific Text in Windows 11 (100% Work)

2. Find a PDF file about “profit and loss report” in a specific folder

content:”profit and loss report” ext:pdf

Explanation:

  • content:”profit and loss report” searches for the contents of the file that contains the phrase.
  • ext:pdf filters only files with PDF extensions.

3. Look for the text file (.txt) containing the “password” created last week

content:”password” ext:txt modified:lastweek

Explanation:

  • content:”password” search for files that contain the word “password”.
  • ext:txt filters only text files (.txt).
  • modified:lastweek focuses the results on files that were modified during the past week.

✔ Use the = sign for exact searches (example: kind:=document).
✔ Use a wildcard * for a partial search (example: filename:*report*).

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For those of you who want high-performance, maximum accuracy, and are not satisfied with just the built-in features of Windows Explorer, then this Power User technique is a must-master. By utilizing PowerShell and Command Prompt (CMD), you can perform a search, file by content, much faster, more efficiently, and more accurately especially when working with thousands of files in many subfolders.

1. Take Advantage of PowerShell – Faster than File Explorer!

PowerShell is an advanced automation tool available on Windows, and it has the incredible ability to perform text searches within files recursively (including subfolders).

Get-ChildItem -Path “C:\TargetFolder” -Recurse | Select-String -Pattern “keywords”

Explanation:

  • Get-ChildItem works to browse files and folders.
  • -Recurse ensures that searches are also performed across all subfolders.
  • Select-String -Pattern scans the contents of the file and looks for a match to the word or phrase you specify.

Key advantages of PowerShell:

  • It can process thousands of files in just a matter of seconds.
  • Supports regular expression-based (regex) search for more flexible results.
  • Can be combined with automation and logging scripts.

If you are more comfortable using Command Prompt (CMD), then the findstr command is a lightweight and fast option for searching text in files in bulk, especially text files and lightweight documents.

findstr /s /i /m “secret text” *.docx

Parameter explanation:

  • /s = Search in all subfolders recursively.
  • /i = Ignores case-insensitive differences.
  • /m = Displays only the name of the file that contains text (without displaying the contents of the file).

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