Searching Through Many Workbooks

Amit has a folder that contains hundreds of Excel workbooks. He needs to search through all the workbooks for some specific text and wonders if there is a way to search through all the workbooks and determine the names of the workbooks that contain the desired text, along with the cells in the workbooks that contain that text.

Finding which workbooks contain the desired text is relatively easy. All you need to do is use the Search capabilities of Windows to look for files, in the single folder, that contain the desired text. While it won't tell you the cell locations, it will winnow down the list of files.

Of course, you can use a macro to do your searching for you. (It's always a good idea to use a macro to do the long, tedious work that would otherwise be done manually.) The following will step through all the workbooks in a folder and search for what you want to locate. It will open any file ending in xls* (the trailing asterisk means that it will search for xls, xlsx, and xlsm files).

Sub SearchFolders()
    Dim fso As Object
    Dim fld As Object
    Dim strSearch As String
    Dim strPath As String
    Dim strFile As String
    Dim wOut As Worksheet
    Dim wbk As Workbook
    Dim wks As Worksheet
    Dim lRow As Long
    Dim rFound As Range
    Dim strFirstAddress As String

    On Error GoTo ErrHandler
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False

    'Change as desired
    strPath = "c:\MyFolder"
    strSearch = "Specific text"

    Set wOut = Worksheets.Add
    lRow = 1
    With wOut
        .Cells(lRow, 1) = "Workbook"
        .Cells(lRow, 2) = "Worksheet"
        .Cells(lRow, 3) = "Cell"
        .Cells(lRow, 4) = "Text in Cell"
        Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
        Set fld = fso.GetFolder(strPath)

        strFile = Dir(strPath & "\*.xls*")
        Do While strFile <> ""
            Set wbk = Workbooks.Open _
              (Filename:=strPath & "\" & strFile, _
              UpdateLinks:=0, _
              ReadOnly:=True, _
              AddToMRU:=False)

            For Each wks In wbk.Worksheets
                Set rFound = wks.UsedRange.Find(strSearch)
                If Not rFound Is Nothing Then
                    strFirstAddress = rFound.Address
                End If
                Do
                    If rFound Is Nothing Then
                        Exit Do
                    Else
                        lRow = lRow + 1
                        .Cells(lRow, 1) = wbk.Name
                        .Cells(lRow, 2) = wks.Name
                        .Cells(lRow, 3) = rFound.Address
                        .Cells(lRow, 4) = rFound.Value
                    End If
                    Set rFound = wks.Cells.FindNext(After:=rFound)
                Loop While strFirstAddress <> rFound.Address
            Next

            wbk.Close (False)
            strFile = Dir
        Loop
        .Columns("A:D").EntireColumn.AutoFit
    End With
    MsgBox "Done"

ExitHandler:
    Set wOut = Nothing
    Set wks = Nothing
    Set wbk = Nothing
    Set fld = Nothing
    Set fso = Nothing
    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
    Exit Sub

ErrHandler:
    MsgBox Err.Description, vbExclamation
    Resume ExitHandler
End Sub

To customize the routine for your needs, change the strPath variable to reflect the path to the folder you want to process and change strSearch to reflect the text for which you are searching. The macro creates a new worksheet and places "hits" into each row. Column A contains the workbook name, column B the worksheet name, column C the cell address, and column D the contents of that cell.

Obviously, any macro like this one takes quite a bit of time to run. You can shorten the time somewhat by reducing the number of files it needs to search. The best way to do this is to use the Windows Search approach (described at the beginning of this tip) to identify the workbooks in which the desired text resides. Move those workbooks to their own folder and then do the macro search on that folder.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (5598) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.