Find in Files Command
Applies to: 
Visual Studio 
Visual Studio for Mac
Note
This article applies to Visual Studio 2017. If you're looking for the latest Visual Studio documentation, see Visual Studio documentation. We recommend upgrading to the latest version of Visual Studio. Download it here
Search files using a subset of the options available on the Find in Files tab of the Find and Replace window.
Important
Support for this command was discontinued in version 16.5 of Visual Studio 2019. If you use this command with version 16.5 or a later version, you might see an error message that says, Command "Edit.FindinFiles" does not accept arguments or switches.
Syntax
Edit.FindinFiles findwhat [/case] [/ext:extensions]
[/lookin:searchpath] [/names] [/options] [/reset] [/stop] [/sub]
[/text2] [/wild|/regex] [/word]
Arguments
findwhat
Required. The text to match.
Switches
/case or /c
Optional. Matches occur only if the uppercase and lowercase characters exactly match those specified in the findwhat argument.
/ext: extensions
Optional. Specifies the file extensions for the files to be searched. If not specified, the previous extension is used if one was previously entered.
/lookin: searchpath
Optional. Directory to search. If the path contains spaces, enclose the entire path in quotation marks.
/names or /n
Optional. Displays a list of file names that contain matches.
/options or /t
Optional. Displays a list of the current find option settings and does not perform a search.
/regex or /r
Optional. Uses pre-defined special characters in the findwhat argument as notations that represent patterns of text rather than the literal characters. For a complete list of regular expression characters, see Regular Expressions.
/reset or /e
Optional. Returns the find options to their default settings and does not perform a search.
/stop
Optional. Halts the current search operation if one is in progress. Search ignores all other arguments when /stop has been specified. For example, to stop the current search you would enter the following:
>Edit.FindinFiles /stop
/sub or /s
Optional. Searches the subfolders within the directory specified in the /lookin:searchpath argument.
/text2 or /2
Optional. Displays the results of the search in the Find Results 2 window.
/wild or /l
Optional. Uses pre-defined special characters in the findwhat argument as notations to represent a character or sequence of characters.
/word or /w
Optional. Searches only for whole words.
Example
This example searches for btnCancel in all .cls files located in the folder "My Visual Studio Projects" and displays the match information in the Find Results 2 Window.
>Edit.FindinFiles btnCancel /lookin:"c:/My Visual Studio Projects" /ext:*.cls /text2