Cataloging PDF's with content search

[bellis1]

I am looking for a program that can catalog a wide assortment of Word documents and PDF files. And the kicker would be if it could search through that catalog AND their contents. I do a lot of typing and storage of PDF files but can never figure out what is in them based just upon the title of the file. I have the bad habit of labelling things like "goodpaper", "mustread", etc.; but, sometimes it is impossible to provide a descrip. of what is inside by just a title. Does such a program exist. I have been trying to work a system through programs like StickyBrain but there has got to be a better way. The search function would be key. Any help would be a godsend. I am drowning in piles of papers but that is currently a better method then opening 50 files on my computer to find what I am looking for. Please help.

[FattyMembrane]

the finder does this. i think that most of your disk is kept indexed automatically, so all you have to do is go to file->find... and in the content includes box, type in the text you want. if you keep all of these papers in a particular folder, select specific places from the "search in" popup menu and drag the folder into the box of places (make sure to unclick the main hd or it will search everything).

[rainman::|:|]

I'm not sure you can catalogue the contents of a PDF tho?? Maybe I'm wrong. If it works, it could be helpful at work...

pnw

[bellis1]

That works fantastic for regular text documents but I could not get it to work for PDFs. I know you can change a text file to a PDF but what about the other way around? Thanks.

[rainman::|:|]

The whole point of a PDF is that you can't un-distill it. They don't want you messing around with anything in the PDF. I do wish they made like PDF2, the convenience of PDF but without the restrictions...

so basically, i think you're SOL, unless you have the original files that were made into PDF...

pnw

[Doctor Q]

Another choice is to create PDFs of the Word documents and then use Acrobat itself for searching.

[FattyMembrane]

i'm almost positive that it works for pdf files (it did for me the other night - maybe i was hovering between consciousness and sleep). my contentindexing is screwing up at the moment, so i can't verify it anymore. every time i get info on a folder and click the content indexing arrow, it says that its status is "indexing..." but nothing is happening, and clicking stop does not work. odd...