I need an easy way to 'google' through all my PDF files - anything like this exist?
Foxit Reader is a great PDF viewer that has a very useful, fast search engine. I have used it many times when looking for a keyword through hundreds of PDF documents. It is also free.
It is simple to search for a string of characters in multiple documents as follows:
- Click "Search" on the left side in the Find ribbon. Then a search bar will pop up on the right side.
- Type what you want to search for in the top text box and state which directory to search in.
- Click "Search".
- Done!
Use the native Windows-Search with a special "Filter" for PDFs, eg
Foxit:
- Phantom-PDF: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/PDF_Editor/ ("Desktop PDF index capability integrated into Microsoft Windows search")
- Server-Variant: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/products/ifilter/
Adobe:
There "should" be an IFilter for PDFs as part of Adobe Reader 9 and Adobe Reader XI:
- 64bit version for AR-XI: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobat/win/11.x/PDFFilter64Setup.msi
- 64bit version for AR9: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025
TET:
- http://www.pdflib.com/shop/ifilter/
Include your Dropbox- or GoogleDrive-Folder into the search-index and done. This allows you to search directly from within Windows-Explorer. Read more about the options for the indexer:
- How to search inside files on Windows 7?
- How to get Microsoft Search to index common file types like .pdf and .pub