I have no reason to search through the entire file as each item is very separate from another. If I did for some weird reason, I’d do it in stages or write some python in order to facilitate the search.
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Mm, you use “file” alternately for a document or for a project. Let’s agree that a project consists of all the documents you see in the binder, ok 
In any case, if I understand correctly, you are only ever searching in one document (not project). Then I don’t understand why you copy that into a new project to search in it.
Anything inside a parent folder is what I generally consider one file.
I put whatever is being edited or worked on in a separate Scrivener file because I am a visually impaired user and VoiceOver can become EXTREMELY confusing if I click on the wrong thing on accident. When it’s the only thing in the binder of the temporary file, that confusion is eliminated.
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I see. Thank you for explaining it to me.
What do you mean?
I would do a full copy of everything in the whole entire Scrivener file, then I would write a small and simple search program in Python and the program would do the search for me and give me the desired results.
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I am not a coder. But you seem to be one. Would this work in a similar way to an EasyFind app? So, an app that searches several (closed) Scrivener projects and then shows in which project the search terms are?
No. It would not search a Scrivener file. A Scrivener file is a proprietary file system and it requires Scrivener to open, unless you’re KB or Astrid and have backend source control.
I would do a full copy of all of the text in the Scrivener file and then input it into the Python search program and Python would do the rest.
On a few occasions I have used corpus linguistics software on a Scrivener project. My choice is #LancsBox from the University of Lancaster. It is free to download. Check it out at #LancsBox: Lancaster University corpus toolbox
Provides excellent search features — that part is built on Apache’s Lucene software. Widcards, collocation, stemming, and a bunch of other useful tricks.
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Being curious, I just used DEVONtechnologies’ EasyFind to see what would happen. Searched in the folder where all my Scrivener projects are are located for a word I knew was in a couple of projects. EasyFind easily found all the RTF files where that word exists. Looking at the Location field of the found file you can see which project the word is located. But, Scrivener keeps all the files named the same “content.rtf” inside a folder structure with hashed names it knows all about.
File visible and found, but specific location is obscured by the hashed folder names.
So, while found, perhaps not particularly useful.
Meantime, not a good idea to make any changes or mess around with the contents of a Scrivener project to mitigate risk of project corruption.
@rms You have summarized that perfectly. Overall, apps like EasyFind are only of limited benefit. But they are better than nothing if you want to search in several Scrivener projects at the same time. If anyone knows a better solution, suggestions are welcome.
If it were me with this need, I’d make a list of all the projects that the search tool found, and then use Scrivener to search those projects with the priority placed on the projects I thought most likely to be useful.