Do you know how to search for a piece of text inside multiple files in Windows. I do not – not anymore. Earlier versions of Windows had this feature but I cannot figure out how to do it in Windows 7. It seems you have to index your files and folders and then maybe you can find what you are looking for. I do not want to do this.

In Unix and Linux you can use grep for this. Luckily there are some similar programs for Windows too. I found this one: AGREP

Go to Download page and get the stand-alone executable for Win95 and Win/NT (link)

Extract the archive – there is one file called agrep.exe. I copied it to C:\Windows\System32. This folder by default is in the PATH environment variable so you will be able to run the command from everywhere (no matter which is your current working folder).

Open the command prompt and try to search:

c:\> agrep -r word_to_search_for .


This will search all the files in the currect folder and all sub-folders for the word word_to_search_for

If you just type agrep it will show help and usage information.