The Find in Files tool is used to search for a set of bytes across multiple files. Open the Find in Files tool by clicking the 'Search > Find in Files...' menu option, the Tool Bar, or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F.

Find in Files Dialog

When searching for a set of bytes across files, the Find in Files dialog is displayed. The top portion of the dialog, the Find What area, is used to specify what bytes to search for and is identical to the Find dialog (see Using Find for more information).

The Files to Search area is used to indicate which files should be searched. To search a directory enter a directory in the Find In field or choose a directory by clicking the browse button to the right of the field. To search only files that are currently open in the interface, click the down button on the right side of the Find In field and select All Open Files from the drop-down list. Enter a file name mask in the File Types field using the characters '*' and '?' to indicate wildcards. Multiple file masks can be entered in the field by separating them by commas or semi-colons (for example: "*.exe,*.dll"). If the Include Subdirectories toggle is enabled, then the subdirectories of the specified directory are recursively searched as well.

Other options for the search can be set by clicking the Options button at the bottom of the dialog. Consult the Using Find help topic for information on the Match Case, Match Whole Words Only, and Search with Wildcards toggles.

Click the Find button to start the Find in Files search, or the Cancel button to dismiss the dialog without performing a search.

Output Window

When some occurrences of the search string are located in a file, the results are displayed in the Find in Files tab of the Output Window. For each file which contains a match of the search string, a dark gray header line will be displayed in the Output Window indicating the name of the file and the number of occurrences found. All search occurrences for the file will be listed below the dark gray header, one per row of the table. Click the '+' or '-' button beside the header, or double-click on the header to hide or show all search results for that file. Alternately, all headers can be closed by right-clicking on the table and selecting the 'Shrink All' menu option, or all headers can be opened by right-clicking and selecting the 'Expand All' menu option. Each search result lists the Address, Size, Value, and File where the search occurrence was found.

Along the left side of the dialog is a graph indicating where the search occurrences were found. The graph will display information for the file the currently selected search occurrence is in. The selected search occurrence will be highlighted as a yellow line and the other occurrences will be displayed as blue lines. The number below the graph indicates the total number of occurrences that were found in all files. The display format for each column can be set to hexadecimal or decimal by right-clicking on the Output Window and selecting 'Column Display Format'. Press the Enter key while a find occurrence is highlighted to load that file and move the cursor to the address of the occurrence. Pressing Ctrl+Enter will perform a similar operation as pressing Enter, but the application focus will remain on the Output Window. Right click the table and select 'Clear' to clear all find in files results, or press the Esc key to hide the Output Window.