Visual Studio “Find” results in “No files were found to look in. Find stopped progress.”

Question

Sometimes while developing in Visual Studio IDE, when you use \"Find in Files\" dialog to find something, the search fails and you will see the following message in the \"F

Answer 1

Apparently, for those for who the key combinations don't work (like me at the moment), deleting the following registry key brings salvation:

MyComputer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\[VS VERSION NUMBER]\Find

Of course, [VS VERSION NUMBER] should be internal version number of the IDE. Don't forget to restart your computer.

Mind you, deleting stuff in the registry is dangerous. Like anyone on SO cares but anyway...

Answer 2

My experience with this problem:

Steps to Reproduce

I just experienced this using Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard and Visual Studio 2010 SP1.

I was accessing Visual Studio remotely through Citrix Receiver (from my computer, A, to B) and through Windows Remote Desktop (from B to C). In this set-up (chaining two remote sessions), I sometimes have stuck modifier keys.

In B, I had pressed Windows+Pause to access the System Properties window. (This may or may not be related; I suspect there could have been a stuck key press or something.)

Later on, when I opened Visual Studio on C, I had this problem. Note that I always use Ctrl+Shift+F to access the Find All window.

Solution

I solved it by pressing Ctrl+Scroll Lock as suggested in other answers.

Cause

As for why this happens, I did notice that if I press Ctrl+Break while the text cursor is in the Find Results window but before any results are found then the search stops with the same message. This indicates to me that it's related to a keyboard problem.

As reported by others, apparently it's a Windows bug. Here's a discussion about this.

Answer 3

I can reproduce your issue.

There are some steps as following below you can try:

1. Check the setting Find and Replace (menu Tools → Environment → Find and Replace).

2. Open "Developer Command Prompt for VS2013" and paste “devenv.exe /resetsettings”

3. Use the Visual Studio Setup Wizard (via Control Panel) to repair Visual Studio. You also can read the reference about Find in Files:

   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dechx2tz.aspx

Answer 4

I don't think there is anything you can do to prevent it. It seems to occur after I have stopped a build with CTRL+Break...Maybe I am pressing CTRL+Scroll Lock during that time???

I have only had it happen to me 2-3 times, and that was several months apart.

What he is saying is that occasionally when performing a search within Visual Studio you get the mentioned error message. Even though you know there is stuff to find. It is some weird state that Visual Studio gets into. If you press the (CTRL+Scroll Lock) it will 'fix' the issue.

Answer 5

I had this in Visual Studio 2015 yesterday.

In Find in Files, in the textfield Look in:, I typed

*.*

instead of Entire Solution, and that also caused No files were found to look in.

Answer 6

See if this Stack Overflow question helps:

Search stops working for "Entire Solution"

Short version of the solution:

You should try clicking inside the Find Results window, and once the blinking text cursor is visible, hit Ctrl + Break four or five times. That should do the trick.