Search stops working for “Entire Solution”

Question

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

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

I tried all the previous options. They didn't work for me, but reading them made me sure that this is a bug, and I will have to try some unknown ways to get it working. So, I tried a simple file search in Visual Studio 2010 in:

1. The current document
2. All the open documents

Both of which worked.

Then I tried Find in Files and woah! It started working.

Answer 5

It only seems to lock-up if I use Ctrl + F (Find in Entire Solution) and never if I use Ctrl + Shift + F (Find in Files).

Answer 6

That Ctrl+Break trick worked for me for years, it's really interesting to finally understand why this happens. With VS2015 I have somewhat related problem with search: my Ctrl+Shift+F simply does not work, this key combination seems to be ignored when I press it. I tried to reinstall even VS 2015 and I still got that same broken behavior.

In case somebody has identical problem, here's what was the reason:

I turns out that for whatever random reason VS2015 shows that "find in files" dialog on another monitor that's attached to my PC. That other monitor is 4K Samsung TV that normally stays "Off" and I have no clue why VS 2015 sends that search dialog box to that monitor. Surprisingly, when I turn on my TV the search dialog moves to the primary monitor on its own!