How to search within pdf and other documents, other than simple text, preferably using a GUI?

Question

Is this possible in principle?

It seems to me that search tools like gnome-search-tool, Catfish and Searchmonkey can search within text files, but not within other more complex documents like pdf or with extensions handled by LibreOffice. Am I missing something here?

Are there programs that could achieve that?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

3

recoll is the answer - suggestion from comment: here

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:23

Community

1

answered Aug 25 '12 at 21:18

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 14 '18 at 11:43

Sorry for the late reply!

From Searchmonkey 0.8.3 onwards, we now support complex text files such as PDF, DOCX, and DOC.

The latest code can be found on Sourceforge:-

https://sourceforge.net/projects/searchmonkey/files/gSearchmonkey%20GTK%20%28Gnome%29/

Kind regards, Adam - Searchmonkey founder

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 02 '12 at 06:50

0

I don't have a GUI app suggestion, but yes it is possible. A command line tool for this is pdfgrep.

answered Aug 02 '12 at 06:50

otus

873

How to search within pdf and other documents, other than simple text, preferably using a GUI?

3 Answers3