Depeche View Lite lets you quickly search and explore plain text files

Searching one or two plain text files is easy. Windows Search and Notepad will probably be enough. But when you need to browse ten files, a hundred, maybe even thousands, then you’re likely to need a little specialist assistance. And that’s where the free-for-personal-use Depeche View Lite comes in.

Point this tiny portable program at a location and it will open every plain text file in that folder tree (up to a maximum of 10,000 in this build, anyway -- the $40 commercial version is unrestricted). These are all displayed in a flat view, one above the other, and that alone can be useful as it’s easy to scroll down and browse them all.

When you do have a lot of files then you’ll soon want to start searching, of course, and this is extremely easy. There’s no need to open a dialog box, just start typing and the screen immediately updates, displaying only matching files and highlighting every occurrence of your keyword.

Should you need more searching power, your text can also include operators like AND, OR and NOT, as well as the * wildcard. And you’re able to define a path mask which restricts your searches to particular files (main*.html NOT .html.old , say).

If you prefer to keep typing to a minimum, you’ll appreciate the program’s many mouse options. For example, just clicking a word highlights it, and displays floating icons with more options (search, copy to clipboard, highlight phrase, and so on). Or right-clicking a word leaves your current window alone, and instead opens a pane on the right hand side with the results of your search.

And if you need to keep track of the various items you’ve found, that’s not a problem. Locations within any file can be bookmarked for speedy recall later.

At some point you may want to edit a file, and life isn’t quite so convenient here: unlike its commercial big brother, Depeche View Lite doesn’t have an integrated text editor. Just pressing Ctrl+E at any point will open the current file in Notepad, though, and you can customize this to have the program use whatever editor you like (Settings > Options > Search, Edit).

There are some issues with the program, and most of them relate to the, well, quirky interface. Features don’t always work as you expect, and it takes a while to find your way around.

Once you’ve learned the basics, though, Depeche View Lite proves an interesting and very capable search tool. And if you regularly work with large numbers of plain text files then it could save you a lot of time and hassle.