EasyFind, Microsoft Word Files & Wildcards

Miscellaneous Needful things
1

I’m trying to search for text in MS Word files (.doc and .docx). I’m hoping to use wildcards as well.

Easyfind does what I expect searching for text content in txt files and rtf files, but it can’t reliably find text inside doc and docx files.

For example, I’m looking for a five-digit number that might look like this: $21,123. So I would enter $2?,???. This produces no results.

Am I doing something wrong?

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Steve

2

.doc and .docx files aren’t text-based formats, so they can’t be reliably found in contents-based searches.

Also, non-alphanumeric characters, like $, will be ignored in the search.

3

Okay, thanks.

Do you know of a way for search in multiple MS Word documents (preferably with wild cards)?

Thanks again,
Steve

4

You could use our application DEVONsphere Express. It allows for wildcard searching, but again, the same admonition about non-alpha characters applies.

5

I’ve now converted all my MS Word files to rtfs (thanks to Terminal’s textutil). EasyFind is happy to search in the rtfs. (And I’d also be happy to by Devonsphere, if that would work better.) But I need help formulating the right query.

I have a folder full of files (2000+). Every file contains the same text at the end which includes, say, “John Doe”. But earlier in each file, there might be a reference to “John.” That’s what I’m looking for. The files that contain John which aren’t followed by the word Doe.

If I search for I get a hit on every file. If I search for <John NOT “John Doe”> I get no hits at all.

Can anybody help me form a proper search for John not followed by Doe?

Thanks!