You may have saved many projects over time and later on it will be a pain to search for the project of interest since you had to open each project one by one to check if it’s the one since we don’t support search contents inside project files.
This is changed in Origin 2026 with a newly designed Find in Project Files dialog to help you find the project so that you can start your real work faster.
There are multiple ways to open the dialog:
- Alt+Double click in empty workspace, toolbar or menu area
- Edit: Find in Project Files…
- Hotkey Ctrl+Shift+F12
Explanation to some controls
Most controls in the dialog is self-explanation.
Find – type keyword here.
- There are also two buttons after it. One for case-sensitive, the other for match full word.
Look In – specify what projects to search
- Recent Projects: All project files that have been opened in your Origin will be belong to Recent Projects.
- File Location. Click … to specify the location, check Include Subfolders if you want to search in subfolders there as well. The down arrow in File Location have quick access to User Files Folder and recently folders you have accessed.
Search In – narrow down what contents to search
- All — all contents except File Comments
- File Name — only search opju file name
- File Comments — When saving project file, user can type some comments in the project.
- Books — book and sheet short name, long name, comments, info. variable, column label rows, cell notes. Tables column/row headers in hierarchical result sheet can also be searched e.g. slope, etc.
- Graph — graph shortname, long name, comments, axis title, legend, and annotation text
- Notes — contents in Notes window
- Folder Name/Notes — folder name and notes in project structure in PE
Note: For data area of worksheet, in Origin 2026, we don’t search cell values/text. .
Detailed View – if checked, each finding in each project will be listed . If unchecked, each found project file only shows once with Count column to show how many findings. Only the 1st finding is listed in Found Info column.
Color Rows by File is useful when sorting by columns so findings in same project may not be listed together. User can easily tell if non-adjacent rows belong to the same project.
The dialog is modeless so you can minimize the dialog or drag it to 2nd monitor to continue the search while work on opened project.
How it works:
Type in Keyword, Look In, Search In and then click Find button.
- If Detailed View is checked, each finding will be listed and user can mouse over to read details. Double click to open the project file with the found book activated.
- Here is an effect of checking Color Rows by File and sort by Element column so same type of findings are together, e.g. Worksheet, Workbook, Project, Columns. Same projects are colored the same.
- If Detailed View isn’t checked, only 3 rows are listed since raman are only found in 3 projects. Count column shows how many findings in each project. Mousing over Found Info. to see the details of the 1st finding.
Here is an example of finding notes inserted in cells. The cell’s column name and row number is given. In Location column, column Long Name is given while in Matched Type column, column short name is given.
User can sort by Matched Type to find all opjus with cell notes “bad” found at B1 cell.
Here is an example of searching slope in Books of various projects. Footer, report table row header, etc. are found
Further options when right clicking
- Show Files Without Search – This is an action. You may want to see all projects under the specified location or all recent projects without searching to get an idea how many projects you will be searching.
- Show When “Look In” Changed – this is a checkbox. With it checked, whenever you change Look In settings, it will show all project files there before searching.
- Copy Row – copy the row text onto clipboard
- Open – open the project file. Same as double click on it.
- Append – append the project file in current Origin session
- Open in New Instances – this will launch a new instance of Origin with the project opened. Useful if you want to compare multiple projects side by side.
- Open Containing Folder – open the project location in Windows Explorer
Contents search in Recent Origin Files dialog
When saving project files in Origin 2026, Origin extracts all meaningful contents and save it with the opju. Therefore we also added contents search in Recent Origin Files dialog in Origin 2026.
- Double click in empty workspace, menu/toolbar to open Recent Origin Files dialog.
- Make sure Contents column shows since searching here purely searches displayed text in each column
- Prefix the keyword by <. For example type <raman will show all recent opju files with raman in contents. Mouse over the Contents to see all saved contents
Note: This dialog only searches contents on OPJU files saved in Origin 2026 and later on. To search older OPJUs or OPJ files, please use the Find in Project Files dialog
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