You can use "File containing text:" field in Advanced tab to search text data inside of files. The databases does not contain any information about the content of files so that actual files are used in searches.
Locate32 uses only a simple binary search routine so that file types are not recognized. However, in the case of some file formats, text is not typically packed or encoded and therefore searching routine may work. You may also try to search using unicode character sets (see below). Older MS Office file formats stores text in plain ANSI format so this search feature can typically be used with them. Newer MS office files uses unicode (UTF16) character set. However, text in PDF files are often encoded so this feature does not work with PDF files.
The searching routine allows the following searching terms.
| Hello | search for files containing text 'Hello' |
| str:Hello | same as 'Hello' |
| str:Hello\0 | same as 'Hello' but string is terminated with zero byte |
| uni:Hello | search for unicode (UTF16) string 'Hello' |
| wstr:Hello | search for unicode (UTF16) string 'Hello' |
| utf16:Hello | search for unicode (UTF16) string 'Hello' |
| utf8:Hello | search for unicode (UTF8) string 'Hello' |
| utf7:Hello | search for unicode (UTF7) string 'Hello' |
| hex:12AAFF | search for binary data '12AAFF' from files |
| bin:12AAFF | same as 'hex:12AAFF' |
| dword(16):1234ABCD | search for double word (32-bit value) '1234ABCD' (base is 16) |
| dword(10):12345678 | search for double word '12345678' (base is 10) |
| word(16):123E | search for word (16-bit value) '123E' from files |
| byte(16):1E | search for byte (8-bit value) 1E from files |
| regexp:cat|dog | search for 'cat' or 'dog' |
Note:
'dword:12345678' is same as 'dword(16):12345678' and 'hex:78563412'
'word:1234' is same as 'word(16):1234' and 'hex:3412'
'byte:12' is same as 'byte(16):12' and 'hex:12'
'hex:0 0 0 0 0' is same as 'hex:00000000', 'hex:00 00 00 00' and 'dword:0'
With 'str:' and 'uni:' you can use:
| '\0': | zero byte |
| '\n': | line break |
| '\r': | carriage return (\r\n is default line break in Windows) |
| '\t': | tabulation char |
| '\b': | bell |
| '\XX': | hex byte 'XX', for example \FF |