File search problem

I need to be able to search the contents of Word files in a set of folders
to find files containing a certain word.

However currently when I search a folder to find a file containing (say)
"golf" (I know a t least one file contains the word 'golf'), it does not
find any files. Even selecting contain contents.

However if I save the file in text format, thesearch finds the file.

Why - am I doing something wrong?

Thanks
Peter

Please tell us a little more.

Which Vista feature are you using to search? (Starting from where?)
Does your search method work search for other words besides golf?
Where is this folder containing document(s) that contained the word golf?
What file format are the documents that contain golf that aren't being
found? (Word 97-2003, 2007?)
Were those documents ever converted from other file formats?
Have they been in their folder long enough to have been indexed?

That's all I can think of now, but it might help us.
In the meantime, try creating a brand new document in Word and typing golf
in the body. Save it to more than one location, such as in Documents, AND in
that folder where the search is not finding it. Does Vista search find the
brand new document?

Brian

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Brian,
Sorry for the delay answering your questions - I've been away.
a) Using search from Start or from within Explorer
b) Does not find any word in the document (golf was just an example)
c) file is in a folder imediately of a drive partition.
d) Word 2003
e) the documents are scanned and through OCR (ABBYY) to Word 2003 then
saved.
f) Not sure what you mean by in long enough?

Thanks
Peter
"Brian" <brianHYPHENbradley@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uFx1NqcNIHA.2000@xxxxxx

Hi, was there ever a solution to this problem? I get the same difficulty using Vista search. If I search for files with, say, "golf" in the contents, I get all sorts of results - but no word documents!! pdf files are all successfully searched, but word files only appear if the word "golf" is in the file name. I have made sure that the folder options / search tab has beenset so that it (supposedly) searches the contents and the file name. Any ideas? Most the files it is missing are Word 2003 files. It doesnt matter how I start the search - it always gives the same results.

I don't expect this will be helpful, but I just did a Vista search for the
word 'golf' and I get 74 documents, most of which are Word documents, and
where the word 'golf' is in the file text and not in the title, and about a
third of which are 'Microsoft Office Word 97-2003 Documents'.

One thing I do every few months is to rebuild the search index 'whether it
needs it or not'; often clears up problems.

"Colin2703" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:d880ca56ab1bc766d8d2e69fc6842765@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Thanks. I think this is a problem unique to my setup, or something I have done wrong in a previous life. I thought I was on to something when I saw the other posting, but maybe not. I may look for a "repair" option on the Vista disk. I have rebuilt the index but it hasnt changed things.

Hi, Colin.

Have you set Indexing Options to include the folders where those documents
are? And have you given yourself permission to see files in those folders?

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1)

"Colin2703" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:d880ca56ab1bc766d8d2e69fc6842765@xxxxxx-gateway.com...

Genius. I went into indexing options / advanced and selected file types. On that page there is an option to index only file names or to index file names and content. I selected the latter - indexing took over an hour. But now it find docs with search criteria in the contents as well as the title. Thanks lot - I dont know if I am meant to locate that option in order to search content, but it works now.