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
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
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.
Using Visual Studio 2022 (professional and also tried with community), V 17.2.5, my search function was not working in Find in All Files, so I browsed through my soltion folder, under .vs\{ProjectName} folder, there is a folder called FileContentIndex. Deleting this folder, after closing visual studio, and restarting it, seemed to solve my problems.
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.
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.
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.
I'm having a similar situation with Visual Studio Community 2017 and now 2019 (patched up to 16.1.4). In my case it doesn't show any results, it just searches forever without ever finding anything. My solution was to undock the "Find and Replace" dialog and move it to anywhere in a floating position. After undocking it seems to work fine, even after docking it again back to it's original position.
