Advanced Find and Replace 3.0

When talking about search and replace tools, I must confess I am not crazy about them at all, and the main reason is that the file managers I used during my long years spent so far as a computer user always provided me with decent such capabilities, but what about people that need more? Well, they can start writing scripts to do perform advanced search and replace operations, or simply grab a specialized program like the one I have here, called simply Advanced Find and Replace.


Setup

Advanced Find and Replace comes from a French company called Abacre, and its last version is 3.0. The trial version can be used without any functional limitation for 21 days, but after that you'll have to register the program or stop using it. The registration fee is $29.99 for a single home-user, but other licensing options are also available on the official site.

The setup package of the program has only 1.2MB in size, and comes as a ZIP archive. All you need to do is unpack the contents of the archive and run the Setup.exe file, follow the instructions and the program will be running for the first time in an instant!

Interface

Being a program with only a few needs from its interface, Advanced Find and Replace (we'll call it AFR from now on, to save space) has a well organized interface with an "all out" approach. All its main features are exposed in the main window, and the menus only have a few additional actions available. Despite the fact it wasn't needed, AFR even has a bunch of visual themes, and I can't say this is a bad thing, but on the contrary, I really enjoyed this little eye candy offering from Abacre!

Features

As I said before, my file searching and text replacing tasks are not hard at all to accomplish, but what about looking for a certain text that appears in 10 out of 10,000 files and replace it? Now, that's where a program like AFR is needed.

Before saying anything else, I must confess that the thing that impressed me most was the speed of this program, especially since I wasn't looking just a certain file, but a certain phrase inside all the files on a drive. This is what I called "specialized tool"!

There are 3 search types to be performed - Folders, Files and Results, and 3 main tasks to accomplish - Find, Replace and Batch Replace. Binary operators can be easily used for your searches, and there is also support for creating advanced regular expressions to enhance your search tasks.

The best thing is that normal queries people use with Google or AltaVista on the Web could be employed for finding stuff on your own computer. For example, if you type "+ "www.SoftDistrict.com" Internet -marketing", the results will be documents that contain www.SoftDistrict.com, possibly have the word Internet and that don't include "marketing".

These being said, I am sure you got the idea... AFR is a small program that can prove a great helper to those that really need it, but let's draw the conclusions now, shall we?

The Good

AFR 3 is a small yet powerful utility that has 3 main advantages: speed, flexibility and ease of use. Its documentation is extremely well done, and the trial version enables you to experience the full potential of the program.

The Bad

Most home users won't pay $29.99 for a program they use only from time to time, and I think that a lite version for such users would be a really good idea.

Conclusion

Advanced Find and Replace should find its place in every power user's tools pack, as long as they work with large number of files and need to perform quick find and replace tasks. For the rest of us, it depends on the needs and tastes of each user... so hit the download link below and start your 21 days trial period now!

Developer: Abacre, SARL
Price: $29.99
Trial Link: Download