I was discussing with a colleague the option of using Google Docs as a wiki system. I quickly tested adding several docs with dummy text in it. However when I searched for that text in the overall Google Drive search bar. I got 0 results back. Is there a way to fix this?
I tried the quotes option and the advanced search option. Both fail. Here is the actual text I'm searching for
and here is the search:
advanced search doesn't change much:
While Google does index the contents of Google Docs to make them searchable, they do not index partial search terms. I suspect this would require a lot more resources on their part.
It looks like you searched for an incomplete term and expected a match with the complete term. Including "fail" as part of your search won't match when the term in your document is "failed".
I've run into this issue while searching in other Google Apps (Gmail, Sites, etc.) as well and gotten this answer from Google Apps Support.
By default, the search bar looks for filenames. There are two methods to search for specific text:
"dummy text I'm searching for". 
Another way to searching within Google Docs files
enter Google Docs folder
click down arrow by folder name
select "search within folder name"
Just searched within .TXT files stored on Google Docs and when opening the file, Google displays it with a text viewer.
In FF (and I assume other browsers) I could then search for strings using FF's find within page (Ctrl-F, Ctrl-G).
I'm working on transcriptions of baptisms and grouping by family. I need to search for names to see if I already have a family listed. I used to be able to do the regular "search" from Google Chrome and search the document for even one word. It stopped working in the last couple of weeks.
So just now I tried the search and replace - I put in Timothy. It found all instances of the name. I just never clicked the "replace" .. only used it for the search and it worked perfectly. Not as easy as when the Chrome search worked but better than nothing.
