Windows 10: File Explorer Search not working for .docx files

I am a Windows 11 user. When I search for a word in File Explorer, unless the word is in a filename, the search results do not return the appropriate .docx files. The search results do return pdf, xls, txt, and Microsoft Word 97 - 2003 documents. I have tried a bunch of troubleshoot items to get this to work and I can't seem to fix it. Can you please help?

:)

 

Windows Explorer not searching docx file contents

Hi all,

Recently Windows Explorer stopped finding .docx files when I search for a specific word. I know that these files contain the words that I am searching for, and I have tried lots of things:

• "Search in file contents" is enabled
  
• .docx files are set to have names and contents indexed
  
• I've tried rebuilding the index
  
• I tested the search on other file types, and it returns results for seemingly everything except .docx files
  
• I tried upgrading to Windows 11 to see if this would fix the issue, but it did not
  

I would really appreciate any suggestions, as being able to search file contents is very important for my studies.

 

File Explorer Search Working with .docx files but not .doc files

Windows 11

File Explorer Search



If I search from "Desktop", I do see some .docx and some .doc returned based on a search term in teh file contents.



I have a folder "Business" on the "Desktop" and a subfolder "Tests". The folder contains 2000 .doc and 2000 .pdf files. When I search for terms in the content, the PDFs are returned. The .DOC files are never returned.



I started taking the files and trying to create new files with the same content to see if that made a difference.



I created a new .docx file with a term in it in that folder and the search worked!



I tried to remove images and headers/footers from the .doc files to see if the content was making a difference and it did not.



I took one of the complex .doc files and saved as .docx and the search worked!



So it seems to be that in this folder (but not all others), the search will not return any files that are .doc but will return any .docx.



Both .doc and .docs files are owned by Administrators (same).



Both .doc and .docx are checked in the Search Index file types.



Does this provide any insights on what to explore next? So far, both Dell and Microsoft have given up and just defaulted to return the device or reset Windows, both of which seem absurd.

I thought about mass-converting from doc to .docx, but I prefer to solve the problem and also separately be able to retain the original file timestamps.



Thanks in advance for any insights.



Thanks,

Scott

 

File Explorer Search Working with .docx files but not .doc files

Windows 11 Home

The search was attempting to find a specific word in the File Contents.

Searching for a term in the Filename itself does return the file. File contents does not.

*.doc and *.docx do return a list of files.

File content search is the problem.

Thank you!