Searching in MS Excel file contents

[robbyell]

Hi all - I've tried to find an Excel worksheet/tab based on its contents - it's a tab which could be in any one of 30 Excel files, but it's not showing up in my search.

Here's the syntax I'm using in the search box:

ext:xls;xlsx;xlsm content:davidstow

...to find the tab and therefore the file which contains the word "davidstow". I've used this type of search with success before. Thought I'd check I wasn't going bats by searching again using a term which I know occupies a single cell in a known indexed file:

Cell A1 in tab "blue" within "Banana.xls" contains (solely) the text "pigeon".

Search:
banana
gives me the file Banana.xls

But:
ext:xls;xlsx;xlsm content:pigeon
again gives no results, so something's not working.

Any ideas? I've tried both Everything 1.4 and 1.5.

Thanks!

[tuska]

Hi,

I had no problem with the search query:

ext:xls;xlsx;xlsm content:pigeon

[-OR-

si:pigeon

(EV -> Windows Search -> EV)].
The file and file content was always found when I ran several searches and used one or more worksheets.

In my opinion, the worksheet in which the search word is located cannot be displayed in Everything.
To do this, you have to search an Excel file by selecting all the worksheets and running the search.

Examples are given below.
 

2025-01-26_Searching in MS Excel file contents.png (55.11 KiB) Viewed 47 times

 

2025-01-27_Searching in MS Excel file contents.png (80.11 KiB) Viewed 9 times

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