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Question

Can't search within files

  • September 23, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 249 views

Hello I am trying to search the contents of all my files for a specific term but the Box search is only searching folder names and file names, and not searching within the content of the files themselves. This is a critical part of my workflow and one of the main items I need if I switch my company over to Box from OneDrive. Is there a setting I am missing?

      3 replies

      Rona Box
      • Rona Box
      • Community Manager
      • September 25, 2025

      Hi ​@mbzar, 

      Welcome to Box Community, and we’re glad to help with your Box search queries. 

      The content within your files is also stored within the Box search index. The following file types support file content search: ‘boxnote’, 'csv', 'doc', 'docx', 'gdoc', 'gsheet', ‘gslide’, ‘gslides’, 'htm', 'html', 'msg', 'odp', 'odt', 'ods', 'pdf', 'ppt', 'pptx', 'rtf', 'tsv', 'wpd', 'xhtml', 'xls', 'xlsm', 'xlsx', 'xml', 'xsd', 'xsl', 'as', 'as3', 'asm', 'bat', 'c', 'cc', 'cmake', 'cpp', 'cs', 'css', 'cxx', 'diff', 'erb', 'groovy', 'h', 'haml', 'hh', 'java', 'js', ‘json’, 'less', ‘log’, 'm', 'make', ‘md’, 'ml', 'mm', 'php', 'pl', 'plist', 'properties', 'py', 'rb', ‘rst’, 'sass', 'scala', 'script', 'scm', 'sml', 'sql', 'sh', 'txt', 'vi', 'vim', 'webdoc', ’yaml’

       

      If you can’t search using the file content, it could be because your file type doesn’t support content indexing. 

      To know more about search for files and folders, please see this article. 

       

      Hope it helps! 

      • CardinalTom
      • New Member
      • December 10, 2025

      Hi, I’ve just tried this using our Box drive - we have a set of year / week subfolders to organise delivery notes. When I search for a location that definitely exists in those PDF files, Box search returns ‘Sorry, we couldn’t find what you’re looking for’. This is true for PDFs in subfolders and also in the folder where I started the search from. When I open the PDF file in Box, I can copy and paste the text I’m searching for, so it’s definitely recognised as such!

      • CardinalTom
      • New Member
      • December 30, 2025

      Hi ​@Rona Box any luck with this? I’m happy to grant access if that helps. I just tried again - searching for ‘Lypiatt’ finds an image file with that in the name but not the multiple PDF files which have that word in the content, and which I can copy and paste when I open the PDF using the Box web viewer.

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