Find Files Not Containing a Search Term

You can easily get a list of files not containing a particular search term by running a “list files” action and turning on the “invert search results” option.

1. Clear the file selection.
2. Click on the folder that contains the files you want to search through. Then select Include File or Folder or Include Folder and Subfolders from the File Selector menu.
3. Repeat step 2 if you want to search through the files in multiple folders.
4. Select the file format, archive format, and text encoding configurations that are appropriate for the files you want to search through.
5. Start with a fresh action.
6. Set the action type to “list files”.
7. Enter the search terms that the files should not contain.
8. Turn on the “invert search results” option.
9. Click the Preview button to run the action.

The Results panel will show a list of files that do not contain the search terms. If you entered a list of search terms, only files that do not contain any of the search terms will be listed.

This action is available in the PowerGREP5.pgl library as “Find files not containing a search term”.