I've been making a program which reads several strings from a Notepad file which's location is set through user input. Then they enter a string which is in the file, a positive message is shown if it's not then a negative one is shown.

However I can only scan the first string of the file and return whether that's a yes or no. How do I change this code so it scans every string in the file and THEN tell us whether the word is in the file.

public static void main(String[] args)throws IOException {
        // TODO code application logic here

        String phrase, phrase2;
      Scanner fileScan;

      Scanner scan = new Scanner (System.in);

      System.out.println ("Input file:");
      phrase = scan.nextLine();

      fileScan = new Scanner (new File(phrase));

      System.out.println ("Enter string to search for: ");
      phrase2 = scan.nextLine();

      if (fileScan.hasNext(phrase2)) {
      System.out.println("This file does contain the string \"" + phrase2 + "\"");
      }

      else if (phrase != phrase2) {
      System.out.println("This file does not contain the string \"" + phrase2 + "\"");
      }

    }

}

And of course suggest any help/advice you are able to!!

Just read it back, bad wording and punctuation on first two lines. I'll say them again...

I've been making a program which reads several strings from a Notepad file which's location is set through user input. Then they enter a string AND IF it is in the file; a positive message is shown. If it's not then a negative one is shown.

First of all phrase is the input file and phrase2 is the word you want to search. why do you compare them.
Also never compare Strings with == or != . Use: equals:
str1.equals(str2)

Try running this code:

while (fileScan.hasNext()) {
  String line = fileScan.nextLine();
  if (phrase2.equals(line)) {
    System.out.println("This file does contain the string \"" + phrase2 + "\"");
  } else {

  }
}

Or using your code, although I haven't tested:

int i = 1;
while (fileScan.hasNext(phrase2)) {
  System.out.println(i + ": This file does contain the string \"" + phrase2 + "\"");
  i++;
}

Or if you don't want to read the entire file, then use the first version and once the phrase2 is found brake from the loop:

boolean found = false;
while (fileScan.hasNext()) {
  String line = fileScan.nextLine();
  if (phrase2.equals(line)) {
    found = true;
    [B]break;[/B]
  }
}

// use the found variable
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