Agent Ransack is another solid tool for things like this, offering both a free version, and a pay version with some nice extended features.

https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/

~bill

> Some significant time ago (2004), Peter raised the issue of
> searching within *.docx.
> http://www.ztw3.com/forum/forum_entry.php?id=117795
>
> Today, my colleague asked me to check possible plagiarism for a dubious
> assignment from one of her students. I happen to have on my computer
> thousands and thousands of assignments in *.docx and *.pdf from previous
> students for the same business case.
>
> I would, of course, appreciate doing the search for identical bits of
> sentences with ZTree, but I know the ZIP+XML structure of Office files
> makes it impossible.
>
> I therefore tried the inbuilt Windows Search, but it took a very long
> time and resulted in nothing in the end, even for the most obvious bits
> that should have been flagged. Obviously, the engine does't work
> well. :-( As all those files are also on Entreprise OneDrive, I could
> fortunately perform the search online (which works fine), and it worked
> the assignment happens to be an original BTW) :-).
>
> End of the problem for today :-)
>
> But for future needs, I would like to enhance the process. What
> would you therefore recommend for powerful content search on local
> PC? (Hopefully, a free or an affordable solution).
>
> Back in 2014, Mathias suggested FilelocatorPro. What about now ?