Powershell: Searching Content of files and write results to text file - search

Question

I'm new to powershell so I don't know where to start. I want a script that searches in all (pdf, word, excell, powerpoint, ...) file content for a specific string combination.
I tried this script but it doesn't work:
function WordSearch ($sample, $staining, $sampleID, $patientID, $folder)
{
$objConnection = New-Object -com ADODB.Connection
$objRecordSet = New-Object -com ADODB.Recordset
$objConnection.Open(“Provider=Search.CollatorDSO;Extended Properties=’Application=Windows’;”)
$objRecordSet.Open(“SELECT System.ItemPathDisplay FROM SYSTEMINDEX WHERE ((Contains(Contents,’$sample’)) or (Contains(Contents,’$sampleID’) and Contains(Contents,’$staining’)) or (Contains(Contents,’$staining’) and Contains(Contents,’$patientID’))) AND System.ItemPathDisplay LIKE ‘$folder\%’”, $objConnection)
if ($objRecordSet.EOF -eq $false) {$objRecordSet.MoveFirst() }
while ($objRecordset.EOF -ne $true) {
$objRecordset.Fields.Item(“System.ItemPathDisplay”).Value
$objRecordset.MoveNext()
}
}
Can someone help me?

Answer 1

You should try this, but first make sure your in the folder you want to start searching down: (if your trying to search your whole computer, start in C:\ , but I imagine the script will take a decent amount of time to run.
$Paths = #()
$Paths = gci . *.* -rec | where { ! $_.PSIsContainer } |? {($_.Extension -eq ".doc") -or ($_.Extension -eq ".ppt") -or ($_.Extension -eq ".pdf") -or ($_.Extension -eq ".xls")} | resolve-path
This will retrieve all the file paths of those file types. If you have Microsoft office 2007 or above you may want to add searches for ".xlsx" or ".docx" or ".pptx"
Then you can begin looking through those files for your "specific string combination
array = #()
foreach($path in $Paths)
{$array += Select-String -Path $Path -Pattern "Search String"}
This will give you all the lines and paths that that string exists on in those files. The actual line output you get may be a little distorted though due to microsoft encrypting their files. Use $array | get-member -MemberType Property to find what items you can index to and the Select-object commandlet to pull those items out.