Can I search among several xlsx files?

[worldor]

Hello!

Can I search among the values and/or formulas among several xlsx files in a directory including its subfolders?
If not directly, is it possible after I unzip the xlsx?

Thanks!

[Mark Olson]

@worldor
Given that xlsx files are binary, Notepad++ is probably a lousy tool to use for this, even if you did go to the trouble of unzipping the files.

That said, I think dnGrep might meet your needs:

Note that, as the example above shows, it seems that the grep tool searches in the result of an evaluated formula rather than in the text of the formula itself (i.e., it finds foobarfoobar because that’s what the formula returns even though the text of the formula is CONCAT(A1, A1).

[PeterJones]

@worldor ,

As said, XLSX is a binary file. But if you do unzip the XLSX, it’s underlying data is text (XML, specifically)… So you could then use Notepad++'s Find in Files feature to search through all the XML files.

(And if you’re going to unzip the XLSX to see the XML files, then there’s no reason to download some other grep application when Notepad++'s Find in Files will do that same search.)

[Mark Olson]

@PeterJones For my own amusement I’m working on a PythonScript to try to automate this, since it’s a little more fiddly than one might intuitively expect

[Mark Olson]

The Excel grepper tool is done. See https://github.com/molsonkiko/excel_grepper_npp .