sdbonline.com: Windows Search and Xml files

When you try to use Windows Search on the contents of xml files, you will find that not all text of an xml file is indexed.

For example, if you have the following xml file:

<myelement attrib="myattrib">
myelementtext
</myelement>

You will be able to find it by searching for “myelementext”, but searching on any of the terms below will fail

<myelement
"<myelement"
\<myelement
"\<myelement"
%myelement
?myelement
[<]myelement
xpath:\\myelement

Apparently, you can only search over the prefix of the term (ex: "test*"). With that said, the XML filter only outputs text terms within the XML document. (in our example only the terms myattrib and myelement are indexed). The other elements are attributes that are not typically user facing.

To have all text in an XML file indexed, we need to assign XML extension to use the plain text filter.
This is (currently) not possible with the UI, so you will need to modify the registry.

Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml\PersistentHandler and change the default value to {5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}

You will have to rebuild the index (Control Panel / Indexing options / Advanced / Rebuild) to re-index the xml files.

Copy the lines below into a file with a .reg extension and double click to update the registry for you.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml\PersistentHandler]
@="{5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}"

To verify that the 'plain text filter' is being used, go to 'Control Panel', 'Indexing Option'. Select Advanced and on the 'File Types' tab, verify that the 'Plain Text Filter' is being used for the 'xml ' extension