C#

// Summary:
//     Implements a System.IO.TextReader that reads characters from a byte stream
//     in a particular encoding.

FtpWebRequest request = (FtpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("ftp://ftpuser...etc");
request.UsePassive = true;
request.UseBinary = true;
request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Ftp.UploadFile;
request.Credentials = new NetworkCredential("username", "password");

BinaryReader br = new BinaryReader(File.Open(fileLocalDir, FileMode.Open));

FileInfo info = new FileInfo(fileLocalDir);
byte[] testArray = new byte[info.Length];

int i;
for (i = 0; i < info.Length; i++)
{
    testArray[i] = br.ReadByte();
}

request.ContentLength = i;

try
{
    Stream requestStream = request.GetRequestStream();
    requestStream.Write(testArray, 0, i);
    requestStream.Close();

    FtpWebResponse response = (FtpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();
    response.Close();
}

c2423 wrote:

I figure there must be part of the Win32 API that performs the find in files function for a set of files

c2423 wrote:

Can anybody give me any pointers?

I are Troll

c2423 wrote:

I'm happy searching text files but not Word, Excel etc?

MSDN states:

Windows Search currently supports the indexing of over 200 types of items (such as .txt, .html, and .xml file formats) and can work with multiple types of data stores (such as the NTFS file system and Microsoft Outlook).

I are Troll