Every been in that situation when you desperately need to find that code you checked into TFS a few days back but just can’t remember what team project, what branch, what solution or what file you checked it into. Well you are not alone… Only if there was a way to efficiently search for files and text with in TFS. It is possible… You need to get your hands on Agent Ransack… This is a stand a lone tool that does not integrate with TFS but gives you the capability to search through text files effortlessly. Agent Ransack searches through files, text or otherwise, fast and efficiently. When searching the contents of files for code, or other text, Agent Ransack displays the text found so you can quickly browse the results without having to separately open each file! Agent Ransack is free for both Personal and Commercial use and can be Download from here. Set the Look In directory of the Ransack search tool to your TFS Workspace and type the text you would like to scan for, you can limit the search by narrowing down the filter path or the name of the file. Found text is shown with highlighted keywords so you don't need to waste time opening each file looking for the right information. The regular expression wizard helps you build regular expressions for complex pattern matching searches You even have the option of searching by modified, created or last accessed date Export your results to a file for importing into other apps or for sharing with others Agent Ransack also provides search support for popular Office formats including Office 2007 and OpenOffice Next time you are looking for that illusive line of code whether it is a method declaration, function call, or algorithm that you checked into TFS, use Agent Ransack for a quick search.
