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How does one look for a specific word in a directory full of pdf files? I've been doing a Contents search for (e.g.) "California" and should get lots of hits, but don't get any. What's the trick? thanks,

highstream wrote:How does one look for a specific word in a directory full of pdf files? I've been doing a Contents search for (e.g.) "California" and should get lots of hits, but don't get any. What's the trick? thanks,

I don't normally search within PDF files but tried it just to test. Seems like XY uses "Raw view" to locate text inside PDFs. But you are right, its not finding the intended text.

serendipity wrote:

highstream wrote:How does one look for a specific word in a directory full of pdf files? I've been doing a Contents search for (e.g.) "California" and should get lots of hits, but don't get any. What's the trick? thanks,

I don't normally search within PDF files but tried it just to test. Seems like XY uses "Raw view" to locate text inside PDFs. But you are right, its not finding the intended text.

AFAICT .PDF's are mostly a binary format and thus impossible to search without a binary converter/filter. Windows Explorer and other FM's that borrow heavily from it, use something called IFilters, which XYplorer doesn't currently hook into.

Although not on the public roadmap, I seem to recall (but can't find) Don posting about evaluating and considering IFilter support, although he considered it tricky at the time. There's a lot of other Preview work already scheduled, so maybe?

As one of (the many) alternatives you can use the windows search with the appropriate ifilter (e.g. Adobe) component.

Or: http://www.copernic.com/en/products/des ... index.html but this one is maybe a bit overpowered for what you need.

Also most common PDF readers can search multiple files at once:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/search-tex ... ed-search/

That link for PDF X-Change Viewer did the trick. Powerful, quick search. Thanks.