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Old 01-07-2006, 05:01 AM   #1
RJ Emery
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Default PDF Search Utility

I have over a hundred PDF files. Is there a freeware utility that would enable me to search all of them at once for given keywords?

   
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Old 01-07-2006, 05:19 AM   #2
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What OS? In Mac OS 10.4, the built in Spotlight searches PDFs.
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Old 01-07-2006, 07:50 AM   #3
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Good question. I am running W98. I also would be interested in a similar utility for Linux, to which I will be moving.

   
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Old 01-07-2006, 09:05 AM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RJ Emery
Good question. I am running W98. I also would be interested in a similar utility for Linux, to which I will be moving.
Have you tried Windows search? It is able to search for words contained in files (any files) and I use that a lot to locate files). If you allow Windows to index your drives (those with files you may need to search) it's pretty fast, too.

   
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Old 01-08-2006, 01:02 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by iamback
Have you tried Windows search? It is able to search for words contained in files (any files) and I use that a lot to locate files). If you allow Windows to index your drives (those with files you may need to search) it's pretty fast, too.
From what I can see and tried, W98 Search (Start > Find > Files or Folders ...) is not capable of reading text within PDF files, nor am I aware of any capability for it to index my drives. I do not believe W98 has a separate Windows File Indexing function.

   
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Old 01-08-2006, 01:30 AM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RJ Emery
From what I can see and tried, W98 Search (Start > Find > Files or Folders ...) is not capable of reading text within PDF files, nor am I aware of any capability for it to index my drives. I do not believe W98 has a separate Windows File Indexing function.
Well, on my little Christiaan I have Win98SE and while it may not build an index it is certainly able to search for and find plain text within PDF files. Of course it depends on how the files are built, and if they're PDFs of images, there isn't any plain text to find (except for the layout instructions themselves) - but I have a few that do contain plain text and Search is finding them just nicely. But no search utility will find text-in-images-of-text, unless you OCR the files first (if possible). And I imagine any search utility will also have problems finding text within PDF files where each letter is "positioned" separately, instead of whole strings - except maybe Acrobat reader, which isn't a search utility.

   
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Old 01-08-2006, 06:04 AM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by iamback
Well, on my little Christiaan I have Win98SE and while it may not build an index it is certainly able to search for and find plain text within PDF files. Of course it depends on how the files are built, and if they're PDFs of images, there isn't any plain text to find (except for the layout instructions themselves) - but I have a few that do contain plain text and Search is finding them just nicely. But no search utility will find text-in-images-of-text, unless you OCR the files first (if possible). And I imagine any search utility will also have problems finding text within PDF files where each letter is "positioned" separately, instead of whole strings - except maybe Acrobat reader, which isn't a search utility.
I am still back to needing a search utility. The PDFs are all searchable and indexed themselves (i.e., I can open any ONE file using Acrobat Reader and look for keywords from there). I just need something that can read all the PDFs for the keywords I seek in one operation.

If you have a response that is on topic, please contribute. If not, take it somewhere else.

   
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Old 01-07-2006, 09:42 AM   #8
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Google desktop search can search pdf files.

   
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Old 01-07-2006, 10:18 AM   #9
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Originally Posted by Kelvyn
Google desktop search can search pdf files.
I have never tried Google desktop since from the descriptions I've never found anything it can do that Windows can't do already - and many things it cannot do that Windows can.

   
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Old 01-07-2006, 11:50 AM   #10
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Marjolein:

I have never tried Google desktop since from the descriptions I've never found anything it can do that Windows can't do already

I've heard that Google Dektop searches function a lot better than Windows Search, which is no surprise at all, but I've never tried it, as I seldom search for anything (except for files that I can't remember or even imagine where Windows XP has put them).

   
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