Hi

thanks for the response. However, I think that search will only look for
items within the FILE PROPERTIES (file last save date, Comments, Author etc)

I am looking for an item in a cell so it does not appear to work

Do you agree?

Thanks

Tim
"dlw" wrote in message
...
not sure what xp search is doing, but to find it, in excel:
file/open/tools/find will bring them up

"Tim Childs" wrote:

Hi

I want to search for a numeric value (e.g. 283.57) in a large number of
Excel files stored in a directory.

While text seems to be stored as ASCII code and is visible in a file
editor,
the numbers in Excel appear to be coded and certainly the XP file search
does not <do the business.

Are there any ways round this? (and, out of interest, can anyone tell me
how
the numbers are stored?)

Many thanks

Tim

PS I have done some searches on the archive but not turned up anything
relevant/helpful.