We borrow from the operating system the ability to browse for our document files to load into the application currently. But what about also searching for documents on our hard disks that contain search terms in the text? A search results window opens showing the documents found on disk containing the search terms. We can then launch a text content pre-viewer to examine the text files to see if we want to import or not. We will do this for each result or cancel the remainder if we import enough for our research or re-use purpose.
Since Scrivener allows you to import documents via drag and drop into the binder, what you might try is using Windows’ own feature for searching and previewing documents in File Explorer. Both Vista and Win7 allow you to preview documents in the Explorer window (and there’s external free software you can download to imitate the behavior in XP, though I know nothing about it), so you can search for specific text and then go through the list of results and view the contents in the sidebar, then just drag the desired items into the Scrivener project binder to import them.
Thankyou. That is helpful and appreciated.