CMD Search a directory to Find a string inside a file

Question

I need to find the files in a directory that have specific strings, using Windows CMD prompt.

E.g., I need to find the files that have a string like this:

<h1>Select an Item</h1>

Answer 1

"findstr" iswhat you are looking for.

findstr /I "<h1>Select\ an\ Item</h1>" *.*

findstr is the command, /I is a flag to match the string case insensitive. "<h1>Select\ an\ Item</h1>" is your string (note the escaped spaces!) and *.* means "in all files in this directory".

The basic syntax is findstr "seachString" filename.ext. You may replace filename.ext with *.ext or *.* to filter cretin file types or look in all files. This will look only in the current directory and not recursively.

More information about the command findstr documentation

Answer 2

1. Open up a Windows console (or CMD).
2. Go to the folder, from where you want to start the search.
3. Let's say you search for a text (e. g. "abc") in a folder, specifically in all the Word files (e. g. ".doc" and "docx"). Then the command should look like this

findstr /s /i /m /c:"abc" *.docx *.doc

Where /s searches recursively (including subdirectories), /i means it searches case-insensitive and /m prints only the file name if there is a match (more information on arguments can be found here).

You will get a list with all the Word documents that contain the text.