How to Add Encrypted Files to Search Index in Windows 11 / 10

What is the purpose of making the files encrypted? The files are made encrypted because nobody can access this file except the ones who has the password to open this file. Windows also doesn’t allow the appearance of such encrypted files in the search results if any user does windows search. This is because indexing the encrypted files is not enabled in Windows, by default. If you want to add the encrypted files to the index in Windows, then this post will help you on how to do.

 

How to Add Encrypted Files to Index in Windows 11/10

 

Step 1: Press Windows key on your keyboard and type indexing options.



Step 2: Then, press the Enter key.

 

Open Indexing Options 11zon

 

Step 3: Click Advanced button at the bottom of the Indexing options window as shown below.

 

Advanced Indexing Options 11zon

 

Step 4: Select the Index Settings tab and Check the Index encrypted files checkbox to continue.

 

Encrypted Files Indexing Checkbox 11zon

 

Step 5: Please click on Continue button to proceed and allow the indexing of Encrypted files.

 

Cannot Verify Data Security 11zon

 

Step 6: Now you can see that the checkbox Index encrypted files is checked and then, click OK button as shown below.

 

Index Encrypted Files Checked New 11zon

 

Step 7: Once done, it will start indexing all the items and this will take some time, so wait patiently till it finishes.

Step 8: After the indexing is completed, please click Close button to close the indexing options window.

 



Indexing In Progress 11zon

 

That’s it.

Now onwards, you can search for any encrypted files using windows search.

I hope this post was informative and please let us know in the comments section below.

Thank you for reading!