Excel Files Text Search for Windows and Linux

This script searches .xls, .xlsx, and .xlsm files for specified keywords/phrases.

Key Features

1. Fast: Utilizes parallel processing to expedite searches. With four keywords and 1000 Excel files, it took only 180 seconds.
2. Configurable: Specify minimum file size, input filename, output filename, and any number of keywords—all configurable via a file.
3. Excel-compatible: Generates a CSV file that can be opened in Excel with UTF-8 characters.
4. Comprehensive: Searches all files listed in a CSV file (files_to_search.efu from Everything save file).
5. Efficient: Excludes files that have no matched keywords from the results.
6. UTF-8 Support: Supports filenames and keywords/phrases in UTF-8, allowing for symbols like Cyrillic characters in the search configuration and the resulting CSV output.

Compatibility

• Windows: Designed primarily for Windows.
• Linux: Also compatible with Unix-like systems, provided the file list is in the specified format.

Requirements

1. Python with pandas (install dependencies via requirements.txt).

   For Windows

   • Everything from Voidtools.

   For Linux

   • Create a CSV file with filenames and their sizes, with a header like:

     Filename,Size
     

How to Use

1. Ensure Python and Everything are installed, then run pip install -r requirements.txt.
2. Download the script and search_config.txt.
3. Open search_config.txt and add key phrases after line 19 (after the comments).
4. Use Everything to search for .xls files.
5. Save the search results as files_to_search.efu.
6. Place files_to_search.efu in the same directory as the script.
7. Ensure search_config.txt is correctly configured.
8. Open a console and navigate to the script directory.
9. Run the script with python .\search.py.
10. Wait for the script to complete.
11. Open output_results.csv in Excel or a text editor to review the results.

Example

Configuration (search_config.txt)

Supports phrases in other languages via UTF-8. All the necessary instructions are already there: check out search_config.txt.

Command Output Example

reading from: files_to_search.efu, exporting to output_csv.csv
files bigger than 5000
with keywords: ['32', 'project', 'other project', 'third project', 'maybe']
removed 174 files that are smaller than 5000
using 32 workers
1/883 files (0.00% done). Time total 0.08 $R59GSHE.xls
2/883 files (0.01% done). Time total 0.11 $RG6HYYA.xls
...
882/883 files (97.10% done). Time total 91.13 Розклад+.xls
883/883 files (100.00% done). Time total 183.74 темп.xlsx
search done
saving
done
Total files with hits 708, files with errors 5

File Output Example

sep=;
Filepath;Error_msg;32;project;other project;third project;maybe;Hits
A:\\\\censored_name.xlsx;;True;True;False;False;False;2
C:\\\ncensored_name.xlsx;;True;True;False;False;False;2
A:\$RECYCLE.BIN\...\$R59GSHE.xls;;True;False;False;False;False;1

Errors Example

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\root\vfs\ProgramFilesX86\Microsoft Office\Office16\DCF\SyncFusion.XlsIO.Base.dll;**File is not a zip file**;False;False;False;False;False;0

Good luck with your search!