File Hound

File Hound is a tiny and portable software utility that gives you a huge advantage when it comes to searching for text. Instead of checking a single open document, the app is capable of processing multiple files at the same time. It offers support for many popular file types, including .txt, .pdf and .doc.

Since installation is not required, you can save the .exe file anywhere on the disk and simply click it to launch File Hound. Another possibility is to move it to a flash drive to run it on any PC directly.

Plus, it doesn't alter the Windows registry configuration or create extra files on the disk without your approval, so everything will be eliminated after removing the app.

The GUI is represented by a small window with a plain and simple structure, where you can specify the target directory or drive to scan, include or exclude subfolders, apply file masks to filer results by name or format, as well as limit the file size.

The software application can be integrated into the Windows Explorer context menu by associating it with folders. However, this means that it will add some entries to the Windows registry, and it requires administrative privileges to do so.

During scan jobs, you can check out the name, number of instances, size, containing folder and extension, along with the date of creation and last modification for each identified file. It is also possible to skip the currently scanned file if it takes too long, as well as to check out log details with any errors. Too bad it's not possible to create an exclusion list with files and folders before conducting search operations.

No error dialogs were shown in our tests, and the software application didn't hang or crash. It carries out scan jobs in reasonable time while remaining light on system resources. To conclude, File Hound is not the most resourceful program we've seen in terms of features, but it gets the job done and can be easily tested.