After using Prepare to Search or pressing Ctrl+F and entering a search term, use the Find on Disk command in the Search menu to search through the files in a particular folder, even if you don’t have those files open in EditPad Pro. The disk-based search uses the search term and search options from the search toolbar or panel. Only the All Files, All Projects, and Closed Files search options are ignored.
If the disk-based search includes files that you have open in EditPad Pro, then the Find on Disk command searches through the files open in EditPad Pro rather than through the files on disk. This means that if the files have unsaved changes in EditPad Pro, the unsaved changes are searched through rather than the original file on disk.
The Find on Disk command shows a folder selection screen that is very similar to the one shown by Project|Open Folder.
You can enter the path to the folder containing the files you want to search through into the drop-down list at the top. If you have recently searched through files from this folder, you can select it from the drop-down list. EditPad Pro remembers the last 16 folders. Another way to select the folder is to browse for it using the folder tree. The drop-down list and folder tree are automatically kept in sync.
Tick the option “recurse through subfolders” if you also want to search through files contained in subfolders of the folder you selected.
If you want to search through all files in the folder (and optionally its subfolders), select the “all files” option. If you want to search through only files of a certain type, you can select “files of type” and pick one of the file types from the drop-down list. The list contains all the file types you defined in Configure File Types and for which you ticked “show in file type selection lists”. This makes Find on Disk search through all files that match the file type’s file mask.
To search through files matching another list of extensions, select “file mask” and enter the list of extensions or file masks, separated by semicolons, into the “file mask” drop-down list. You can also select a recently used file mask from the drop-down list.
If you choose the “regular expression” option, then the regular expression must find a (partial) match in the name of a file for it to be included in the search. This regex is used to filter files by their names only. The text or regular expression that you want to use to search through the contents of the files needs to be specified on the search panel or in the search toolbar before you use the Find on Disk command.
Tick “list all matches in a side panel” to list all the search matches in all the files with one line of context in a side panel. This option makes Find on Disk work like Search|List All Matches, except that it searches through files on disk rather than files open in EditPad. If you use a regular expression that may find zero-length matches then the Find on Disk command does not add those zero-length matches to the Search Matches panel. If only zero-length matches are found in a certain file then that file will not be opened or added to the project either. If you want Find on Disk to find files with a regex that finds zero-length matches then you need to untick “list all matches in a side panel”.
Tick “create new project” to open files with search matches into a new, untitled project. This is the same as using Project|New Project before using Search|Find on Disk. This option has no effect if “open the files” and “add the files to the project” are both turned off.
Tick “open the files” to make EditPad Pro actually open the files in which search matches are found. If you turn this off, but turn on “add the files to the project”, then the files show up in the Files Panel as closed files. Since only managed projects can contain closed files, turning off “open the files” automatically changes the current or the new project that the files are added to into a managed project.
Tick “add the files to the project” to add the files in which search matches are found to the project. If you don’t work with projects or if you work with unmanaged projects then you should tick both “open the files” and “add the files to the project” or untick both these options depending on whether you want to open the files. If you turn on “open the files” and turn off “add the files to the project” then the files are opened as outside files, without adding them to the project. If you turn off “open the files” and turn on “add the files to the project” then the files are added to the project as closed files. Either way, turning one of these options on and turning the other option off forces the new project (if you ticked "create new project") or the active project to become a managed project. Only managed projects can have files open that aren’t part of the project or have closed files be part of the project.
Tick “make the files read only” to open the files in read-only mode.
The Find on Disk item has a submenu that lists recently searched through folders. Each time you use Search|Find on Disk, the folder you search through is added to the top of this submenu. Though the menu shows only the folder’s path, all the settings from the Find on Disk window are remembered by the menu. Select Maintain List in the submenu to see the settings used for each folder. When you select one of the remembered folders, EditPad Pro immediately searches though that folder, using the same settings for displaying search matches and opening files. If you have searched through the same folder more than once then the folder appears only once in the Reopen Folder menu with the most recently used settings.
The Find on Disk submenu does not remember the search term and other options set on the search toolbar or search panel. When you select a folder from the Find on Disk submenu, the present search term and search options are used. This way you can easily run different searches through the same folder.
“Remove Obsolete Folders” removes all folders that no longer exist from the Open Folders submenu. “Remove All Folders” clears the Find on Disk submenu.
Search menu
Show List of All Matches
Search|List All Matches
Project|Open Folder