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 Shift+Ctrl+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. 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"). Enter a starting directory in the Directory field or click the '...' button beside the field to select a directory with the Standard Directory Select dialog.

If the Include Subdirectories toggle is enabled, then the subdirectories of the specified directory are recursively searched as well. If the Search Only Open Files toggle is enabled, the search only considers files that are currently open (the Files to Search area will be disabled when this toggle is turned on since this information is not used in the search). 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'. Right click the table and select 'Clear' to clear all find in files results, or press the Esc key to hide the Output Window.