Search Through Microsoft Word Documents to Find Text, Keywords, Phrases or Regex Matches

With PowerGREP, you can quickly search for a piece of information through files and folders on your computer, including Microsoft Word documents saved in DOC, DOT, DOCX, and DOTX files. Simply enter a keyword or phrase in the Search box, select which folder PowerGREP should go through and which types of files are of interest. When you click the search button, PowerGREP will present you with a list of MS Word documents and other files in which the text you entered in the search box was found. The list will show one line of context for each match. You can instantly view all the text in the document, with highlighted matches, by double-clicking a match in the results.

When you do not know in advance exactly what you are looking for, PowerGREP’s rich regular expression support allows you to search for virtually anything by specifying the form of what you want, and let PowerGREP find the actual text matching that form.

All of PowerGREP’s search features are available when working with Word documents. This includes collecting data, unlimited lists of search terms, file sectioning, file filtering, customized context, and so on.

Search and Replace or Delete Through Word Documents in DOCX Format

With PowerGREP you can also bulk edit or redact Word documents saved in DOCX and DOTX files. To do this, set the “action type” to “search and replace” or “search and delete”. In the File Selector, make sure “file formats to convert to plain text” is set to “writable proprietary formats” or “all writeable formats”. Substituted text will retain its formatting, even though PowerGREP doesn’t show you any formatting.

All of PowerGREP’s features for replacing or deleting matches are available when working with DOCX files. This includes unlimited lists of search terms, regular expressions with replacement strings that can reuse the matched text, extra processing, file sectioning, file filtering, customized context, and so on.

You can even open and edit DOCX files in PowerGREP’s built-in text editor. The editor only shows the actual text in the file, with some basic formatting such as paragraph breaks and list bullets or numbers. The document will retain all its formatting when you edit and save the file in PowerGREP.

The DOCX format is the default format for Word documents saved by Word 2007 and later. Older versions of Word used the DOC format. PowerGREP is not able to modify DOC files. You cannot search-and-replace through DOC files using PowerGREP. If you want to modify Word documents with PowerGREP, consider switching to the DOCX format.

Work with The Raw XML Inside DOCX Files

Technically, DOCX files are ZIP archives that contain a bunch of XML files along with support files such as images. Such file formats are called compound documents in PowerGREP. You can search through and even modify the XML inside DOCX files by setting “file formats to convert to plain text” to one of the configurations labeled “compound documents”. This will also provide you access to all the embedded files via the File Selector. But even in this mode PowerGREP still treats DOCX files as documents. So any actions that copy, move, or back up files will copy, move, or back up DOCX files as a whole rather than the files they contain, to avoid breaking your documents.

Searching through the raw XML can be very useful when you want to search for or modify meta data in DOCX files, such as hyperlinks. You’ll want to set “context type” to “no context” to avoid unreasonable amounts of XML in your search results. And of course when making replacements, it’ll be your responsibility not to mess up the XML and break the document.

There are two ways in which you can get your own copy of PowerGREP and evaluate the software risk-free.

The best option is to buy your own copy of PowerGREP for US$ 159. Your purchase is covered by Jan Goyvaerts's personal three month risk-free unconditional money-back guarantee. This allows you to try the software without any limitations and without any risk for three months.

Alternatively, you can download the free evaluation version of PowerGREP. The free evaluation version can be downloaded anonymously. It allows you to explore PowerGREP for 15 days of actual use. Full documentation is included. The documentation extensively covers both PowerGREP itself, and the regular expression syntax.