[SuperHard]

I have a large collection of pdf's, and although they are reasonably well organized in EndNote, I can't search the text within the files. Is there a tool to search for text or text strings within a pdf?

Can the unix "grep" command do this or some other command?
If I cataloged them using the new release of Filemaker, which is advertised to accomodate any file type, can it search the text in a pdf?

For example, if I have a folder of pdf's, can I search all the pdf's within that folder?

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[cpac]

I think the finder will do this - no? (If you do the command-f, search content thing)

[SuperHard]

Wow, thanks!
I hadn't noticed the content option but that does it! Phew, no need for another dbase!

[Love Calm Quiet]

I seem to recall that I can do a FIND on a pdf opened in PREVIEW with only SOME pdfs - and not with others. Can anybody confirm/explain this? is it a matter of some pdfs being made by too ancient a version of Acrobat or something?

[cpac]

Originally posted by Love Calm Quiet:
I seem to recall that I can do a FIND on a pdf opened in PREVIEW with only SOME pdfs - and not with others. Can anybody confirm/explain this? is it a matter of some pdfs being made by too ancient a version of Acrobat or something?

If that's the case, it might be because the text in the unsearchable .pdfs is not really text, but just an image of text.

[mitchell_pgh]

Think of it this way... some people use... say Word... to create PDFs...
It is searchable because it's using fonts, words etc.

Others scan PDFs. This is NOT a good way of doing it. The files are basically images, and can't be searched and are usually very large.