----- Original Message -----
From: "Freeman Mendell"
Subject: [PCSOFT] Document Search non-Internet


> I have electronic minutes of meetings that go back several years. There
> are many documents. Can anyone recommend a way to search for particular
> words or phrases besides making them into one document and using Word's
> search capability?
>
> Thanks
>
> --
> Freeman Mendell, CISA, Certified Computer Crimes Investigator
-----------------------

I don't know about Win XP, but WinME Search feature allows for fairly precise phrase searches, with options to specify all
sorts of criteria. (I assume Win98 offers the same options). Here's a good example that should give the results you require
without returning too many results:

Start / Search

Rather than choosing "Search for files or folders named:", try some other options below. You can use multiple criteria for
your search

Containing Text: (type your phrase, which can include almost any keyboard character)

Look In: (Specify only the drive containing the folder rather than all hard drives)

Search Options: (Checkmark them to choose, then choose by Date, Type, Size, Advanced).
- Date will give all sorts of date ranges to include, which is handy if you know when a particular document was created.
- Type is the most powerful criteria choice if all the documents are of the same type (e.g.. .doc, .txt, etc.).
- Size is usually not relevant, but may be handy if the documents vary greatly in size.
- Advanced allows subfolder search and case sensitive results.

Using these options is really helpful for the text searching within multiple files. hth,

Al Thompson

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