[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by delaing

BetterRed - Thanks for your suggestion.
Amazing! I just discovered yesterday through a non-MRead forum that you can search within PDFs using Windows Search. Took me a while to get it set up as I had to investigate why it wasn't working, then to find out how to download the only free Ifilter that I could find (Adobe). Works well on files in a Library or located on the C:drive. Can't seem to get it to work for files on a USB drive/stick. (Will worry with that later.)

@delaing - IIRC, Control Panel->Indexing Options will only see drives that were attached at boot time, ie if you plug-in/turn-on a USB drive after Windows has started it wont show up in the Indexing Options locations list.

For reasons I've forgotten I use the PDF-Xchange iFilter in preference to the Adobe one.

Tip re searching - don't search for things other than programs in the Start Menu Search Box. Navigate to the relevant location in Windows Explorer, eg a calibre library and use the search box top right corner.

Originally Posted by delaing

What works better than that, for me, for searching within the magazine PDF files is also something I didn't know about till yesterday. And, with a program I've been using for a while now.

PDF-Xchange Viewer has this capability built-in to its Advanced Search and it will show the actual page reference where it finds the search string. Click on the result reference and it shows that page within the magazine with the string highlighted in the viewing window.

Yes that's a good feature of Xchange_viewer - use with tabbed interface to search in multiple books. I use calibre search to identify books (by tag, author etc), then I open each one in xChange and use its search to find relevant passages. eg Search calibre for author Krugman or Stiglitz then open each PDF and search for 'underwater' etc.

Originally Posted by delaing

I still am wanting to develop a workflow for managing the "found" articles or items. Been looking at Zotero, just a bit, because of another recommendation, but isn't coming across as user-attractive as calibre.

IMO Zotero, Mendeley, Citavi etc are primarily targeted at academia and the like.

Originally Posted by delaing

Did a google on windows search and csv files; appears I would need an addon utility to create a CSV of the search results. Correct?

Not really, and I don't know that such a thing exists, you'd probably need something that converted a .search-ms to a .csv - but see below for what I do.

Originally Posted by delaing

So, I would save the csv list with a name representing the query criteria and then save that as a Reading List to use in the RL plugin?
I have zero time with the RL plugin; just installed it.

No, not quite

I have a swiss army knife called FileMenuTools (FMT), amongst other things it can copy a list of file names from a windows explorer window to the clipboard (it can also copy full paths in various forms, but we only need the file names here).

I select the results list (ctrl/a), from context menu I select FMT->Copy Name...->Copy Name then:-

• paste the list into an empty text file (I use Notepad++).
• replace all the ' - ' with ', ' (strictly speaking not necessary, by default the Import List looks for ', ' but you could have it look for a '-'.
• delete the extensions (.pdf, .txt, etc)
• save the file as results.csv

I read results.csv into the Import List PI (make sure to set it up for title followed by author). One of its 'output' options is to create a Reading List (using the corresponding PI) in the calibre library. From there I might tag the books or use it as the basis for putting things onto my tablet etc.

But Import List's integration with the Reading List PI optional - it has various other options, such as adding a tag to the books. So if you did a search for 'Rocking Chair' you could use Import List to add that as tag to those books.

Also don't forget that Windows can save search results.

You could use the secret (shift right click) Windows Explorer Copy as Path feature rather something like FMT to copy the search results list to the clipboard - but you'll then have to remove the front of the path in creating the csv. I use FMT for lots of other things.

BR