go! (will report in a day or three, depending on work madness!) stoked! thanks again! FOR /F - loop over a text file and populate the variable %%G with each line FINDSTR /S - search through sub directories /N - prints the line number prior to each match (added as it's kind of useful information!) /C - tells findstr to do a literal search using the supplied value, in this case the value stored in the %%G variable Hi there, the findstr works pretty well, however I am having issues getting a redirect to a file working, e.g. &gt;list.txt but I workaournd by using the select all / copy text option of the cmd window. Also not successful with parsing *.pdf as yet, but that has been an issue in the explorer search bar too, so I am wondering if that stems from the windows indexing function... Anyway, i'm getting output, so i'm stoked! thanks