Hope this is the correct forum for this….
I am looking for a way to search the ebook text across a calibre library for a literal string (e.g. the word “maypole” or the name “John Smith”, etc). I do NOT mean the metadata, but the actual ebook text.
Can anyone tell me how I can do this in Calibre?
I know I can search within a given ebook, but I am looking to search across an entire library to find the book(s) containing the string.
The only thing I have found that relates, is in the powerful “search and replace” function under “Convert books”. I realize I could search for a string of “maypole” and replace with “maypole” (e.g. no real change), but I don’t see a list of the books where the change was actually found & replaced*.
Of course, it is risky to use a search and REPLACE function in the way, as one could accidentally replace/damage the original text—but at least it would be a workaround.
*better still, would be the book and a ‘clip’ of the text from each place in each ebook where the string was found—the ‘clip’ would be the search string surrounded with, say, the 15 words before and the 15 words after the search string occurance.
Why am I looking for this? As libraries grow, it is useful to search for many things: In fiction, the first/all places a character or location is referenced; In non-fiction, one might be searching for an ingredient(“carbon dioxide” or “chicken thigh”), or a city, or a person (“Albert Einstein”, etc), a technique (“godet” or “miter”), etcetera.
Thanks for reading this—Please let me know if I have missed something, or if there is something else I should try.
