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I know I created a file in November / December 2021. I know it contained a specific word and I also know its extension. Also I know its folder. But the folder has many subdirectories. How can I narrow down the search to lesser files in Windows? What is the best tool?

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I fell in love with 'Everything' the moment I found it:

https://www.voidtools.com/

Assume I need to locate a file with 'smart' in name, while extension is PDF, I type "smart pdf" (without quotes) in search bar and virtually immediately see all files that fit this filter.

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  • yeah I love Everything too. But I want to search text in file contents, not file names. I guess I should be searching from grep equivalent, but seems that its not straight forward as grep, need to use some hack?
    – Mahesha999
    Commented Nov 24, 2022 at 14:38
  • Ahhhhh, well Everything does that too in advanced search but I do not know how efficient it is.
    – Joep van Steen
    Commented Nov 24, 2022 at 14:47
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    @Maha I would still give Everything a try, as it supports content searching and in combination with the criteria for extension and folder it should not take too long. I just tried it, and in a parentfolder of 105k files in 15k folders the query my_folder\ *.py content:"import pandas as pd" took less than 10 seconds.
    – Saaru Lindestøkke
    Commented Nov 24, 2022 at 18:41
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There are many third-party search utilities for Widows. Mythicsoft's Agent Ransack, shown below, is a good free, nonindexed, search tool:

Agent Ransack

A useful free, open source, tool that indexes files and email message is DocFetcher.

There are many alternative search utilities, any of which could satisfy your requirements.

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