Quote:
Originally Posted by ZahraB
I have numerous PDF files stored in my PC and want to search through them just as you do in Google Books.
Can Calibre solve my problem? If yes, how?
If no, then please advise me!
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ZahraB - a lot of things referred to as search tools operate on the file system data (file name, dates etc) or the file metadata (title, author, publisher, artist, etc). I'm assuming you want something that searches the actual text inside the PDF.
Whilst calibre has some content search facilities here and there, IMO they are not very useful, some are too slow others too restrictive.
If you're running Windows you can use Windows Search from
Windows/File Explorer. You may need to configure and start the Indexing service from Control Panel (once only).
I use Windows Search on a library of a 100,000+ books (50% PDFs). Search time is typically 2-5 seconds.
Assuming the PDF's are in a calibre library there's a calibre plugin - Drop Search Results (DSR) - which can be used to integrate most Windows Search tools with calibre. Its disarmingly simple in concept and to use.
Windows search tools produce a list of files that meet the search criteria, if a list from a search on a calibre library is drag/dropped into the DSR dropzone the corresponding books are marked in the calibre library, from there it's very easy to put the marked books into a reading list, tag them, send them to your device etc.
If your running OSX you can use its Spotlight content search facility for PDFs. I'm not aware of any integration of Spotlight with Calibre such as DSR.
If your running a Linux variant, the distro probably includes some content search utilities that can handle PDF. There's a calibre plugin for the Recoll content search tool, but I am not sure of its status - i.e. whether it works, I have a suspicion it stopped working a while ago.
BR