Somehow Visual Studio search has stopped working for me. Anytime I search "Entire Solution" for some text I get this result:
Find all "[Whatever I was searching for]", Subfolders, Find Results
1, "Entire Solution" No matching text found to look in. Find was
stopped in progress.
Why does it suddenly say "No files were found to look in"?
I've found a number of links on Google that say to press Ctrl + Break or Ctrl + Scroll Lock, but none of them seem to work for me.
I get that problem once in a while. One seemingly nonsensical solution I've found is to click inside the Find Results window (not the Output window). Once the blinking text cursor is visible, hit Ctrl+Break four or five times. This seems to "unblock" whatever causes the problem.
There are reports Ctrl + ScrLk may need to be used instead of Ctrl+Break . If these doesn't work then try Break alone.
Note from Codeguard: I have found an explanation and deterministic solution to this problem
Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-bit, Visual Studio 9.0.30729.1
Didn't Work:
Ctrl + Break
Ctrl + Scroll Lock
Restart of Visual Studio
Worked:
Break (in Find Result 1 & 2) (only pressed once)
Source: Comments in Gordon's link...
Bug source
This is neither Visual Studio nor Windows related bug. In fact, the bug is in your keyboard! Many keyboards from different vendors have been reported to be buggy.
Problem
If you press Ctrl+Break and release Ctrl first, then Break gets stuck on a buggy keyboard. If you ever pressed Ctrl+Break the "wrong" way, you will have this problem with search being interrupted.
Details
According to scan code specifications, Break and Ctrl+Break are special. They send "make" (press) AND "break" (release) scan codes the moment you press Break. They send nothing when you release Break. The buggy keyboard will send the following sequence:
Ctrl "make" scan code
Ctrl+Break "make" scan code
Ctrl "break" scan code
Pause "break" scan code
That is, Ctrl+Break is never released, but instead Pause is released.
Reproduction
You could for example use old good Spy++ from Visual Studio tools. Attach it to anything, for example Windows notepad, and monitor messages (I suggest that you select only keyboard messages). Press Ctrl+Break, releasing Ctrl first. Check the output from Spy++. You will see the sequence I shown in Details section.
I have tried two different keyboards on the same computer. Logitech K120 has the bug while some other Mitsumi keyboard behaves according to specifications and does not have the bug.
If you think about it, it's easy to understand that correct behavior needs special case handling, while buggy behavior is naive. This is why many different keyboards can be buggy.
Solution
Replace your keyboard :)
Workaround
You simply need to press Ctrl+Break, paying attention to releasing Break first. It doesn't matter which application is active.
This bug has been in Visual Studio a long time and it never seems to get fixed.
See this MS Connect item from 2004: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/105511/find-in-files-says-no-files-were-found-to-look-in-find-was-stopped
I couldn't believe they still hadn't fixed it in VS2010 - but it's still there :(
The Connect item has been marked as Closed - Won't Fix: https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/718217/find-was-stopped-in-progress-while-performing-search-in-visual-studio
Ctrl+Break or Ctrl+ScrLk cancel a find operation. Try it. What has happened is that some software layer (presumably Windows) thinks those keys are still being pressed even though they are not. Pressing and releasing them clears the flag.
It could be any of these combinations:
Ctrl+Break
Alt+Break
Break
Ctrl+ScrLk
Remember that you have multiple control and alt keys on your keyboard -- try it with each of them. If it's the right Ctrl key + ScrLk, pressing the left Ctrl is not going to resolve the issue.
Here is the Connect issue which Microsoft closed as "Won't Fix".
If this is a recurring problem for you, there is a Visual Studio extension that suppresses the virtual key that causes the problem.
Ctrl + F and Ctrl + Shift + F have stopped working on Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition.
My friend told me going to:
Tools → Import and Export Settings:
Choose: Reset all settings → Next
Choose: No, just reset settings, overwriting my current settings → Next
Choose: General → Finish
In my case I had a bogus character in the "Look at these file types:" field in the search window.
Removing the character solved the problem.
Visual Studio 2017
Search solution in Visual Studio 2012 is broke. I tested this on three machines, did not work on two. What I found which does work is click on drop down arrow next to search field and select Find all. This is a bit of pain because you have to select drop down every time you search in solution.
I tried all the previous options. They didn't work for me, but reading them made me sure that this is a bug, and I will have to try some unknown ways to get it working. So, I tried a simple file search in Visual Studio 2010 in:
The current document
All the open documents
Both of which worked.
Then I tried Find in Files and woah! It started working.
Unfortunately none of these special key strokes work for me. Only restarting Visual Studio 2010 seems to work for me.
I had the same problem in Visual Studio 2013 (Update 3). None of the key combinations listed previously worked for me. I had *.cs selected in the FileTypes.
To get it working, I changed it to *.*, and then back again to *.cs - now it works.
I have been using Visual Studio 13 without this problem for couple of years now and I started having this issue after applying Update 5 or it could be a weird keys combo pressed by me unknowingly which triggered it, I don't know for sure.
Echelon_Force's solution worked for me. Thanks!
Didn't Work:
Ctrl + Break
Ctrl + Scroll Lock
Worked:
Break (in Find Result 1 & 2 window - Only pressed once)
Happy finding in files!
All of the combinations of Scroll Lock and Break didn't do anything for me. As a workaround, I added the solution directory to the Search Folders (the second ellipsis button), then changed the Look In field to the solution directory. The root problem still exists, but for me, this is functionally the same thing.
(Visual Studio 2013, Windows 8.1, x64)
I was using Visual Studio 2022 (tried with both professional and community, V 17.2.5), my search function was not working in Find in All Files, so I browsed to my solution folder, under .vs\{ProjectName} folder, there is another folder with name FileContentIndex. After closing visual studio and deleting this folder, and restarting vs, seemed to solve my problems, and my Find in All Files started functioning correctly.
I had the same problem as glenneroo today, after updating Visual Studio 2019 to 16.4.3. Found a solution that worked for me here.
Open Find Options and check if there is a (special) character in the Look at these file types text field. If so, remove it.
In Visual Studio 2013 after Update 3, I had the same problem. Before, I could just put ".cs" or ".cshtml" in the Look at these file types: and it would work. But after Update 3 I now have to put ".cs" or ".cshtml" (or whatever file types I want to search in) and it works fine.
This works for me after everything else didn't or worked only sometimes:
Do the search, and while searching, hold CRTL all the time and keep pressing Break.
If you are searching for multiple file types, they must be separated with a ; character, not a space.
This returns the correct results:
*.cs;*.vb;*.js;*.aspx
This returns nothing at all:
*.cs *.vb *.js *.aspx
This isn't the problem the original poster, but for other people who can't figure out why their search isn't working, this could be the reason.
Another late-to-the-party answer, but I found yet another "solution" for this problem.
When it looks as if the Visual Studio app has frozen on search...leave it alone. Don't close it. Don't restart it. Just let it go for about 10-15 minutes and the problem may correct itself, as it did in my specific case. I'm not sure as to why leaving it alone solved the problem, although my wholly uneducated guess is that Visual Studio is building some sort of an index to be able to search files and running into a snag. Once the 10-15 minutes are up and VS completes its search, it seems fine after that.
Probably won't apply to most situations, but what fixed it for me was turning off 'Use Regular Expressions' in the search window. I had previously been using Regular Expressions for some tricky replacements and didn't turn off when finished. I think perhaps it was interpreting part of simple replace text (see below - had some special characters) as the start of an incomplete or malformed regular expression, and so couldn't actually do any matching. Would be nice if it told you!
It only seems to lock-up if I use Ctrl + F (Find in Entire Solution) and never if I use Ctrl + Shift + F (Find in Files).
That Ctrl+Break trick worked for me for years, it's really interesting to finally understand why this happens. With VS2015 I have somewhat related problem with search: my Ctrl+Shift+F simply does not work, this key combination seems to be ignored when I press it. I tried to reinstall even VS 2015 and I still got that same broken behavior.
In case somebody has identical problem, here's what was the reason:
I turns out that for whatever random reason VS2015 shows that "find in files" dialog on another monitor that's attached to my PC. That other monitor is 4K Samsung TV that normally stays "Off" and I have no clue why VS 2015 sends that search dialog box to that monitor. Surprisingly, when I turn on my TV the search dialog moves to the primary monitor on its own!
Ctrl + Break works for Visual Studio 2008
Nothing worked for me. I use also Resharper. So I had to reset my VS key bindings and reapply Resharper shortcuts. Only this got me it working.
Reset current keyboard configuration (Tools | Options | Environment | Keyboard | Reset).
Go to ReSharper | Options | Environment | Keyboard & Menus | "Visual Studio" | Apply Scheme.
I am running Visual Studio 2012 Professional in a Virtual Machine, connecting using rdesktop from a Linux machine.
None of the other suggestions worked, but solved the problem was:
Go to the 'Find and Replace' screen. (ctrl-shift-f in my case)
Enter a search text and choose 'Entire Solution'
Hit 'Find Next', it should find a result.
Hit 'Find All', now works without aborting. (Note, i hit my Mouse really hard and some swearing was involved, too, but I don't think that has any relevance apart from a psychological one :D )
Tried all the solution, but the fixed of mine was I accidently change to another language keyboard on my windows, after I change back to English keyboard, it work, finally I can ctrl + shirt + f
I'm currently using VS2019 16.7.7, and, if I try to find something in the whole solution, VS never finds all the occurrences, sometimes only one, or none.
In some recent release of VS2019 (perhaps 16.5 or 16.6) the old "Find and replace" dialog was replaced by a new "Find in files" dialog, and this new one is failing for me. One solution that worked for me was to disable the new "Find in files" and keep using the old "Find and replace" dialog by checking Use previous Find In Files in Tools > Options > Environment > Preview features.
However, I observed that this was only failing in one of my open Visual Studio instances, so I tried the simple "close VS and open it again", enabled the new "Find in files" functionality, and it started working.
Two possible solutions, in case the simple "close and open again" fails.
The following worked for me. Visual Studio → menu Windows → Reset Window Panel. The resizing of Visual Studio made it to hide the option.
This was one of my biggest problems with Visual Studio. For me (Windows 10, Visual Studio 2015) the find in all files window got locked with a white-out, and guess what, hitting print screen solves it.
This has begun occurring for me with the update to Version 15.8.8 of Visual Studio. None of the above steps worked. There is no error. Just what appears to be a 'stuck' search.
I had recently installed ApexSQL Refactor 2018.03.0331. Uninstalling this did not resolve the issue and does not seems to be the cause. It seems to be related to Version 15.8.8 of Visual Studio update.
I completely uninstalled Visual Studio and reinstalled Version 15.8.8 again. The issue with Ctrl-Shift-F searching the Entire Solution is no longer an issue. Whatever caused the problem does resolve after uninstalling and installing.
I once again installed ApexSQL Refactor 2018.03.0331 and everything still works well.
Sometimes while developing in Visual Studio IDE, when you use "Find in Files" dialog to find something, the search fails and you will see the following message in the "Find Results" window.
No files were found to look in. Find stopped progress
Once this message shows up, all the subsequent searches will result in the same message. Nothing fixes the problem including restarting the computer except pressing Ctrl + ScrLk.
What causes Visual Studio to get into this state and is there a setting to permanently prevent it from happening?
According to this thread:
Posted by Microsoft on 10/13/2009 at
4:33 PM
Hi all,
Thank you for your continued interest
in this bug. We have been able to
reproduce the issue intermittently in
several versions of Visual Studio
running on several versions of Windows
and have identified the root cause as
external to VS. The Windows team
unfortunately did not have time to fix
this for their current release, but we
are working with them to hopefully
have this bug fixed for a future
version of Windows. At present, the
workaround (as many of you noted) is
to press Ctrl+Scroll Lock, Ctrl+Break,
or the Break key alone.
Again, thanks for all of the details
you provided about this bug. If you
have any further questions or
comments, please feel free to post
again here; although this issue was
closed quite a while ago, I'll make
sure it stays on our radar.
Thanks, Brittany Behrens Program
Manager, VS Platform - Editor
This bug has been around since at least 2004 and, as of the above post in 2009, had not been fixed.
Sometimes Ctrl + Break works, sometimes Alt + Break, sometimes Ctrl + Scroll Lock, and other times Alt + Scroll Lock.
Right now, nothing works. This has been a huge problem for me. Shame on Microsoft for not fixing this bug in the last nine years.
Apparently, for those for who the key combinations don't work (like me at the moment), deleting the following registry key brings salvation:
MyComputer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[VS VERSION NUMBER]\Find
Of course, [VS VERSION NUMBER] should be internal version number of the IDE. Don't forget to restart your computer.
Mind you, deleting stuff in the registry is dangerous. Like anyone on SO cares but anyway...
I don't think there is anything you can do to prevent it.
It seems to occur after I have stopped a build with CTRL+Break...Maybe I am pressing CTRL+Scroll Lock during that time???
I have only had it happen to me 2-3 times, and that was several months apart.
What he is saying is that occasionally when performing a search within Visual Studio you get the mentioned error message. Even though you know there is stuff to find. It is some weird state that Visual Studio gets into. If you press the (CTRL+Scroll Lock) it will 'fix' the issue.
There are currently nine bugs on the Connect site related to this and marked as Not reproducible.
I created another one for Visual Studio 2010 SP1: "Find was stopped in progress" while performing search in Visual Studio
Please vote for it if you are unable to perform search.
PS: Microsoft claims that they fixed it in Visual Studio 2012.
I have had this problem and saw peoples' answers about the multiple Ctrl + Break/Pause Scroll Lock combinations.
I considered this, but I thought it a poor workaround (especially as I use a Mac Keyboard so those keys are not easily available).
So the solution I found was to do this:
Menu: Tools → Options → Environment → Find and Replace
Uncheck the top three check boxes (checked by default in my settings).
Re-check the top three check boxes.
Et voila, everything should work fine.
Well, it did for me anyway, which was a relief as I can't believe Microsoft would allow a weird key combination as a work around for a bug like this.
I submit this hoping it may help!
See if this Stack Overflow question helps:
Search stops working for "Entire Solution"
Short version of the solution:
You should try clicking inside the Find Results window, and once the blinking text cursor is visible, hit Ctrl + Break four or five times. That should do the trick.
My experience with this problem:
Steps to Reproduce
I just experienced this using Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard and Visual Studio 2010 SP1.
I was accessing Visual Studio remotely through Citrix Receiver (from my computer, A, to B) and through Windows Remote Desktop (from B to C). In this set-up (chaining two remote sessions), I sometimes have stuck modifier keys.
In B, I had pressed Windows+Pause to access the System Properties window. (This may or may not be related; I suspect there could have been a stuck key press or something.)
Later on, when I opened Visual Studio on C, I had this problem. Note that I always use Ctrl+Shift+F to access the Find All window.
Solution
I solved it by pressing Ctrl+Scroll Lock as suggested in other answers.
Cause
As for why this happens, I did notice that if I press Ctrl+Break while the text cursor is in the Find Results window but before any results are found then the search stops with the same message. This indicates to me that it's related to a keyboard problem.
As reported by others, apparently it's a Windows bug. Here's a discussion about this.
I encountered a very similar problem. I was searching a folder for all files for a phrase in all .cs files in my solution. Visual Studio kept saying "No files were found to look in". (It did not have the "Find stopped progress" part of the message.)
I searched for the message and found this question. The suggested keyboard commands in other answers did not work.
I like to use the keyboard for navigation. I had accidentally hit Alt+B and Space. Alt+B is the shortcut to jump to the "Include sub-folders" checkbox on the Find and Replace form. The space bar cleared the checkbox, and then Alt+A performed a Find All action. Because it was not searching sub-folders, no files were found. The message was correct.
After checking the "Include sub-folders" box, searches found the matching files in sub-folders. So if you're getting the message "No files were found to look in" without the message "Find stopped progress", ensure the search is looking in sub-folders!
I thought I was seeing this problem, but after two days of searching for a solution I figured out that the "Look at these file types" selector had changed and didn't include the file extension I needed.
I had this in Visual Studio 2015 yesterday.
In Find in Files, in the textfield Look in:, I typed
*.*
instead of Entire Solution, and that also caused No files were found to look in.
This is not a Visual Studio bug or Windows bug. It's a keyboard bug. Please see an answer in duplicate question https://stackoverflow.com/a/28219093/147805.
I can reproduce your issue.
There are some steps as following below you can try:
Check the setting Find and Replace (menu Tools → Environment → Find and Replace).
Open "Developer Command Prompt for VS2013" and paste
“devenv.exe /resetsettings”
Use the Visual Studio Setup Wizard (via Control Panel) to repair Visual Studio. You also can read the reference about Find in Files:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dechx2tz.aspx
I have found another cause of this: Moving the solution folder to a new location, when CMake is part of the build process.
I was working with the Chromium Embedded Framework and moved the main CEF folder from e:\ to c:\ . This seems to break everything including Find because the CMake build scripts it uses hard-code the disk volume and full path (E:\folder) into the source paths.
To be clear, Press Ctrl + ScrlLck, with the Search Window open. That resolved it for me too.
In Visual Studio with TFS as source control, when I view the history and double click a cs file, the file is loaded in notepad. How can i change the application to be notepad++?
I also would like the OS's default application for the file to still be visual studio
After pouring over ProcessMonitor logs I think I found the solution!
You need to change the what the Windows shell (explorer) thinks the "Edit" action for text files. I was able to change this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\SystemFileAssociations\text\shell\edit\command
to something other than Notepad (in my case notepad2). Now Visual Studio's TFS's changeset dialog opens cs files with that editor.
This will probably change the edit option for not just cs files, but everything considered "text'. The registry entries for file associations are pretty complicated. I suspect that it would be possible to disassociate .cs files from this common "text" category and make this change only for cs files (but I'm not that ambitious). Also, I wouldn't be surprised if people's file associations / shell commands (open, edit, etc...) vary from machine to machine (OS versions, tools installed, etc) - so YMMV.
The only way I found is to replace notepad with notepad++. This article describes how to do it. Don't forget to check the comments to get a link to the "little exe" that comes with notepad++.
Works like a charm on W7 x64.
Cheers,
Phil
\I was able to configure this by adding new value to the registry.
OS: Windows 7 Enterprise x64
Steps on how to do it.
Run: Regedit (alt + r, type regedit)
Look for HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\SystemFileAssociations
Right click "SystemFileAssociation" -> add new key then name it as .cs
Right click .cs and add new key then name it as shell
Right click shell and add new keys name it as edit and open 6
Right click edit and add new key command then change the default value to point to the file exe you want it to run.
ex: C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe %1
Don't forget to add the %1 at the end of the .exe
do the same for open
Hope it helps.
I don't see any options in Visual Studio for changing that, so I'm guessing it uses the system's default text editor.
Try assigning Notepad++ as the default handler for *.cs files.
You can do this from withing Notepad++ by going to Settings/Preference/File Association.
You can also do it by right-clicking on a .cs file in explorer, go to Open With/Choose Program..., then select Notepad++ and check the "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" box before hitting OK.
The only thing that works for me is when I set the default program for the particular file type in Windows Explorer to open with the VS IDE:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe
This opens the code in a new instance of VS. Not ideal, but at least it's easier to read.