Seeker for Windows

By Veign
Free
User Rating

Key Details of Seeker

Search for various files and replace text in them.
Last updated on December 20, 2011
There have been 3 updates
Also available on
Virus scan status:
Clean (it's extremely likely that this software program is clean)

Editors' Review

Download.com staffDecember 20, 2011

Seeker is a powerful freeware search tool that can replace the built-in Windows search feature. It offers advanced search-and-replace capabilities, regular expression searches, several reporting modes, and superfast, highly targeted searching.

Seeker's user interface resembles Office's design a bit, with expandable sections in its left-side control panel and a main report view with draggable categories. Under Search Criteria, we could enter everything from wildcard searches to highly specific file types, a specific word or phrase in the file, and include or exclude our listed files, as well as telling Seeker to search subfolders, ignore case, or use regular expressions (there's a regex list in the very good Help file). We could further narrow down our search by expanding the sections labeled When was it modified? And What size is it?, each of which offered various ranges to choose from. Finally, under Replace Criteria we could specify our search-and-replace options. Under the Tools menu, we could choose from four Reporting Types: Detailed file list, Structured report, Summary report, and Summary report with file list. The program's Options included enabling logging, adding custom file formats to the list of valid formats for the Replace mode, and enabling Special File Handlers for Word documents and Excel spreadsheet files. Seeker's documentation warns that selecting special file handlers can slow down search and replace operations, but we heartily approve of the option. As we learned, Seeker is fast enough that selecting one or more of these items won't matter, most of the time.

We entered a variety of search terms ranging from extremely broad to highly specific, using various search criteria and targeting several locations in our system using the search folder selector. We searched with the subfolders option enabled and disabled. Naturally, it made a big difference when searching a large folder such as Program Files. The Replace mode is very easy to use; simply enter the text to replace in the file in the program's text entry field and click Search, and Seeker does the rest. The Structured Report's tree view offered a nice alternative to the more-typical formats, too.

Seeker for Windows

By Veign
Free
User Rating

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Full Specifications

GENERAL

Release: October 19, 2011

Latest update: December 20, 2011

Version: 3.11.0.1

OPERATING SYSTEMS

Platform: Windows

Operating System

Windows NT
Windows 2003
Windows 10
Windows Vista
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows 2000
Windows 7
Windows XP

Additional Requirements: None

POPULARITY

Total Downloads: 7,011

Downloads Last Week: 1

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User Reviews

3.2/5

6 User Votes

Not bad but there are better ones.
jocaschJanuary 17, 2012
Pros
Easy enough to use.
Cons
I had no cons until I discovered Mo-Search 4.0. Once I discovered Mo-Search, I dropped Seeker like a hot potato!
Summary
Poorly written software
joninrockiesDecember 30, 2011
Pros
Does the few things it does fairly well, be agonizingly slow.
Cons
Provision for choosing root directory harks back to DOS 1.01. Not in the same league as the Win7 search program, which is also free. After trying for two weeks to get it to do anything useful, I uninstalled it.
Summary
good, but not what i hoped for
-anonymous-July 8, 2008
Pros
- Can search by date created/modified/accessed<p>- Supports regular expressions and wild-card search<p>- file or folder exclusions<p>- Dose not require scheduled indexing<p>- Free (donation-ware)
Cons
- Can find but not replace text blocks (not just lines of text. Searches for carriage returns) in multiple files. can only replace with single line of text.<p>- Can not search within ZIP files and other archives<p>- does not Integrates with the right-click menu in explorer<p>- Slow<p>- Displays the matching text line(s) but not when you select one of the returned results. it is available by right clicking and selecting results previewer (one file at a time unlike agent ransack)<p>- does not display results as it finds them, you must wait for the search to complete.
Summary
Very COOL App
DBriley68November 8, 2007
Pros
Very nice application!!! I needed an application to go thru files and update some text and I needed it to be able to be scripted to run from the command line in windows. This was more difficult to find than you might think. Works very well and saves me a LOT of work!!!
Cons
There are only a few minor issues. 1) When ran from the command line it doesn't like a dash character "-" in the path parameter. The path gets truncated to just before the "-". 2) I wish it would take multiple search/replace parameters. This is not that big a deal, I just set it up to run again with another set of parameters. 3) It has the ability to save you configuration, i.e. your search or search/replace settings. It would be nice if you could then run it from the command line using a saved configuration which would save entering all the various other parameters.
Summary
works and does its job
harlDecember 7, 2006
Pros
it works well and provides the basic functions needed to achieve what it's meant to.
Cons
it's easy to install, but it registers its own activeX controls (just copying them strangely produces only errors), so it can only be used on a system where it has been actively installed. i wish there was a zipped version just to unpack and use wherever i go. <p>it correctly searches subdirectories, but it can only search one 'root directory' at a time and there's no drag&drop, so the root directory to search in has to be chosen manually - though, the used drop-down box is an acceptable way to do so. in a case when you know neither the extension nor the exact location of a file containing the information, this leads to higher time needed for the search, because even more files have to be searched than when it would be able to add certain single directories (assuming you at least count on the content to be around there). <p>file extensions have to be added in the 'Options' dialog before in-file contents can be replaced by the 'Replace' function (i failed to see what that's good for) and '.*' can't be added as an extension, so after finding content you'll have to add each files' extension you want to replace something in - depending on how many different types of files you search in at the same time, this could get annoying. <p>a last minor: sometimes the program looses mouse focus, though a scroll or title bar or window frame is grabbed. it may be one of the activeX libraries' functions it uses.
Summary
Knowledge is power. Knowing this utility exists could make you some good money.
mrdblackJune 3, 2005
Pros
Many websites have multiple occurences of the same text, the htm, html, php, vbs, xml, etc. files are all text files. You could use this simple utility to search and replace multiple matches to the search text you provide and replace it with the text you provide. Let's say you were able to do this for 200-300 or more files even in subfolders, that could be a lot of work. Thanks to Seeker, it is no longer. <p> <p>- Simple Explorer like interface <p>- Intuitive interface <p>- Quick and easy <p>- Work hard, work really hard (At least get results like you are.)
Cons
- Could use multiline support for search and replace
Summary

Developer's Description

Search for various files and replace text in them.

Seeker has an ultra-fast file search engine on top of a powerful file search algorithm. Searching for files or inside of files Seeker can handle it. Seeker not only searches for files or inside files, Seeker lets you replace text inside of files. Regular expression support and command line parameter support makes Seeker a complete search and replace solution. All results from Seeker can be viewed in one of four advanced reporting modes.