Fast Search Using Index

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WattCommunity
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Fast Search Using Index

Post by WattCommunity »

Hi,

Having been a licensed user (and recommender) of PDF Exchange Viewer for many years I thought I'd give Editor a go.

Sadly I'm still looking for my dream feature, or have I missed it?

THis is what is missing. You still have not implemented a search engine in the the product which uses an index. Thus 3 minutes to search my folder of reports for all the ones with my search term is not acceptable for the routine searches I do.

Of course to get round this I do my search in windows, using the iFilter and windows indexing. But often I need to search annotations (comments) only i.e. search only words I've purposefully added in my annotations. In windows I can't select a search options to perform such a specific search. So I'm stuck.

You should not understimate the power of such a feature, which transofrms PDF-Xchange into a document management system for case file managment and research. It's a key requirement to be able to search our own annotations which may be part of a document classification or textual analysis system.

Let me know if you would consider this and when?
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi WattCommunity,

Thanks for the post and the suggestion - I've created a feature request ticket for this. The ticket number is RT-2317, but please note that this is not a guarantee to implement such a feature, only promise that it will be seriously considered and evaluated. Please also note that should the Dev. Team decide to implement this, it will likely be a long-term implementation.

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by WattCommunity »

Thanks Will.

If your team would like any further details do not hesitate to get in touch. Note Acrobat Pro provides a way of indexing favourite pdf locations.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

:D
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by fastuser »

I have a lot of large pdf documents that I´ve indexed with Acrobat, but I prefer Tracker software in everyday use
Please, add suport to Pdf-Xchange Editor in order it take advantage of Acrobat index
(sorry for my bad english)
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi fastuser,

Thanks for the post - I'm afraid that it isn't possible for us to add support for Adobe's index, as the format that Adobe uses for their indexing is a closed, proprietary format and so, unless they make the details of the format available, we cannot implement support.

However, we have added this to our feature requests list to generate our own Fast Indexing system, but this will not be something that is likely to make it to the application this side of the summer as we have many items ahead of this in our schedule.

HTH!
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by fastuser »

Will - Tracker Supp wrote:Hi fastuser,

Thanks for the post - I'm afraid that it isn't possible for us to add support for Adobe's index, as the format that Adobe uses for their indexing is a closed, proprietary format and so, unless they make the details of the format available, we cannot implement support.

However - we have added this to our feature requests list to generate our own Fast Indexing system - but this will not be something that is likely to make it to the application this side of the summer as we have many items ahead of this in our schedule.

HTH!
Great! I'll be waiting for that feature.
It would be good if this is implemented, also include the ability to index the documents in batch, because once is is available, take it for granted that all my catalogs will be processed to add your index data (right now I have about 1,000 pdf catalogs)

Surely many people who are also fans of your great software, want to do the same in their own pdf files though batch processing (who needs Acrobat?, ha ha)

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

fastuser wrote:It would be good if this is implemented, also include the ability to index the documents in batch, because once is is available, take it for granted that all my catalogs will be processed to add your index data (right now I have about 1,000 pdf catalogs)
You would be better off using the PDF-XChange Viewer for this task — you can keep both products installed and use whichever is best suited for the current task.

The Viewer is almost twice as fast as the Editor at searching a folder of files, and it finds more entries. Neither compare to the speed of an indexed search using Windows Explorer, which takes just 2 or 3 seconds, though it only returns a list of the files containing the search string, not a count of how many times the string occurs in each file.

The Viewer is a more mature product than the Editor, and includes the option to add custom search engines too. Still, for day-to-day use, I always use the Editor as my default PDF viewer.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by John - Tracker Supp »

There are some caveats here ..

The Editor is not actually slower as such though we are working on optimizing and allowing some options to be refined, for example - the Editor searches both right -> left text and vice versa - the viewer does not, The Editor also searches some annotations and some other content that the viewer does not.

As far as Windows is concerned whilst I cannot recall for Windows 8 specifically - other versions rely on a 3rd party iFilter to search PDF's - so if you have no 3rd party iFilter - your snookered and so Windows is only as good as the iFilter installed.

There are also other factors which may or may not be relevant depending on what you are searching and what formats are involved.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by WattCommunity »

It's good to see some progress here John :D

Please get your developers to note my user requirements above in order to make Editor into a competant document management system and research tool.

In particular the search tool must index and allow the specific searching of just annotations and comments (purposeful index search) as well as, of course document content. You do this for ordinary search, which as we all know is too slow for large document libraries such as research papers.

And try to make it cleaner than acrobat's tools - they're a dogs breakfast :wink:
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by John - Tracker Supp »

We will do our best :)
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by bredpitt »

Hi there,
I just found, installed and tried the free version of XPDFViewer just because of the search-feature. And boy, this is really nice: All result-blocks are listed cleanly file-by-file. A click opens file and location without hiding or changing the results-list. Even comments and metadata are included in the search. Gorgeous!
Some blog-post recommended XPDF-Viewer even over copernic desktop search and google desktop.
That's the reason why I downloaded the freeware for testing.
Now I have to find out that Viewer and Editor both do not create an index at all. Is this really true? I searched the whole day for a hidden index-function in both products but without luck.
That's really a pain because copernic is incredible slow in showing unhandy pdf-previews. I thought I got the solution but tracker-soft's programs are just too slow in finding pdfs. Now I'm still looking for a good program doing both: Indexing my papers and showing search-results inside the documents nice and quickly.

Can you implement this index-feature a bit sooner than "maybe later"? It would make PDF-Viewer and Editor perfect pieces of software without competition on the whole internet.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello bredpitt,

Welcome to our forums and thanks for the kind words for our search - glad that you like it so far!
Regarding the creation of indexes - we'll speak with the Dev. Team to see if the priority can be increased, but creating an index is not trivial and would still take some time.

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Hitman »

Hi, I'm having the same problems with the lack of indexes. For my research, I'm always creating advanced search queries to search through specific folders that each contain on an average 150+ pdf files (20k pages). This will take a minute or 2-4 every single time. Sometimes I have to go back to a previous query that I created a couple of minutes before and have to wait the same amount of time. I can imagine that the index process starts when you add a new location in the search pane ("WHERE would you like to search?") and add an index checkbox there.

I'm not a programmer, so it could well be very difficult to implement, but I hope you will consider it; this will open up a large customer base in the scientific world!

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Hitman,

I'm afraid that you're correct here - search indexing is quite complex and we have a number of priorities that need to be addressed first. As I understand, it's planned but we don't have a definite build number, yet.

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Hitman »

Understood, thanks for the explanation!
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Thanks for the understanding Hitman!

Cheers,
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by andre.hoegger »

I'm really searching and misssing this Feature too.
It will be amazing when the indexing of specific folders with Pdf-Xchange get possible.

soo +1 .

:mrgreen:
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Hitman »

Hi, it's been a long time since the last post in this thread and I'm really curious if this feature will be developed in the future. My PDF database is growing day by day and advanced searching is paramount for my job. Maybe it is possible to add a watched folder which automatically updates the index when a new PDF file is added?

Edit: there is another interesting thread which recommends using windows search.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Timur Born »

Absolutely +1! Please make use of my computers resources in order to give me a faster PDF experience.

On that note: I am still hoping for any PDF Viewer to at least match the search results (sorting) of OS X' Preview. PDF search still is in a very sad state after years and years and years of waiting for any improvements.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello All,

I have just asked for a developer update on the status of RT#2317
It has been marked as a long term feature request, due to the complexity of the issue. Search indexes are not the easiest thing to handle (understatement of the week, im sure), but it certainly is something that could use improvements.

Have a good day!
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello Again,

After speaking with our dev team on the matter we have agreed to raise the priority of this. There are many higher priority items slated to be done ahead of this. We do intend on doing this in the future, but at the moment are unable to give any guarantees about a timeline.

I hope this is acceptable, and I apologize for the inconveniences caused.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Jerry9 »

I only started using PDF-Xchange a couple weeks ago. I have been comparing similar PDF editors. I can see that the original request was made in 2014. Having a fast search capability in a document is a high priority for me also. I hope you can find a way to make this happen.

Can you tell us, have the developers looked at the possibility of using the Windows search index as has been suggested by other forum members? What did the developers discover when researching that possibility? Can you tell us how many man hours your dev team estimates it would take to develop your own "simple" version of an indexing search engine?
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Timur Born »

I keep being flabbergasted how low a priority all Windows based PDF viewers put on more solid search results. Editor already is among the faster of the bunch. But the lack of indexing and the even worse lack of good search result presentations makes it look as if PDF search was not an important function to begin with.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello Jerry, Timur,

It has indeed not been the top priority on our list, but I've just asked my colleagues in the dev team for some more detailed information on this, and as soon as I have it I will post it here!

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Ivan - Tracker Software »

Timur Born wrote:I keep being flabbergasted how low a priority all Windows based PDF viewers put on more solid search results. Editor already is among the faster of the bunch. But the lack of indexing and the even worse lack of good search result presentations makes it look as if PDF search was not an important function to begin with.
Well, I guess that the Editor is not just among the fastest, but our way to represent search results is way better than others provide.
Can you please explain what's wrong with our representation?
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by bredpitt »

He is just dissapointed by the portfolio of the whole web. There are countless of PDF-tools out there but just none with pdf-indexing. It's 2018! How is that possible?

Again, (4 years after my last post on this thread) I'm sooo close buying your full-version...if it just had an indexing-feature! I understand that coding a search-engine is applied science. Well, basic-functionality was speedup enough. Look at doc-fetcher, it's opensource and very small (btw, it's the only working opensource-tool, since 2007). It does exactly what is requested here...unfortunatley in java and without being embedded in your pdf-reader. Therefore it's not possible jumping to search-results within documents.
Come-on, look at their code, get inspired, code something similar! ...and remove the ribbon-ui in pdf xchange-editor.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello Bredpitt,
Thank you for the feedback and suggestion, we will take a look at the possibility, but I cannot make any guarantees.
As for you miniscule request of the Ribbon UI, It was implemented due to overwhelming user request, however we knew that many of our long time clients would not like the change, so we opted to keep the Classic UI available as well. You can switch between the two from the UI menu in the upper right corner of the Editor.

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by bredpitt »

Correct me if I'm wrong: Wasn't this feature removed in the newest version (7.0.327.1)? I tried this version yesterday and couldn't find the option. So I tried 7.0.327.0 and got rid of the ribbon-ui without problem.

"overwhelming user request" :mrgreen: unbelievable. Microsoft drew a lot of criticism when switching their office-products to ribbon-style. It was a good idea implementing ribbon as an optional feature in the X-Change Editor. It's propably for the MS-fans. However, I'm getting offtopic.

Regarding to overwhelming request: This topic already catched over 1700 views and is four years old. So if you need an argument at a company-intern meeting: That's a good one!
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Ovg »

bredpitt wrote:Wasn't this feature removed in the newest version (7.0.327.1)?
No.
7.0.327.1
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello Bredpitt,

As per OVG's above screenshot, I can confirm, we have not removed the feature, nor do we have any plans to remove the feature in the future. As I mentioned before, We know our long time users will want to keep that layout, and we intend to support it for as long as it is viable to do so.

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by bredpitt »

Thank you! Now I found it. The german translation did confuse me. I was looking for "classic" but in the german version the option reads "use symbol-bar" (in german). I thought it was the menu's headline.
PDFXchange_Classic-Toolbar.jpg
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Glad to hear you found it, have a great day! :)
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Timur Born »

Ivan - Tracker Software wrote:
Timur Born wrote:I keep being flabbergasted how low a priority all Windows based PDF viewers put on more solid search results. Editor already is among the faster of the bunch. But the lack of indexing and the even worse lack of good search result presentations makes it look as if PDF search was not an important function to begin with.
Well, I guess that the Editor is not just among the fastest, but our way to represent search results is way better than others provide.
Can you please explain what's wrong with our representation?
Hello Ivan, thanks for chimming in and sorry for taking so long to answer. All of the below points were already posted by me, some as far back as 2012 when OS X' free Preview already offered most of the requested search result features: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=13894

Highlighting of search results in the text was implemented since then, which is a good thing. I can also use the proximity option to get single page result entries instead of getting one result entry per word found (sometimes half a dozen on a single page).

But what's still missing:

- !!! Option to order results by relevance (based on number of hits per page, headlines, table of content) or at least by just number of hits per page !!!

Simple chronological ordering of search results in a document of hundreds or thousands of pages doesn't help half as much as proper result ordering would do.

- Option to show thumbnails of search results, preferably with highlighted results inside the thumbnail. In a big document I often recognize target pages by their overall layout, thumbnails would save us having to read and click through dozens of search results in order to find the correct one.

- Per tab search results! Currently Editor only displays one single (!) search result window, regardless of how many document tabs are open. When you switch to a different document tab then search results will not switch. In order to get per document search results you have to put each document in its own window or start a new search whenever you need results of a different tab.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by bredpitt »

New version is out. Still no indexed-search. Instead, XP-support was cancelled. That's horrible!

Win7-users already have the built-in windows-search and can use the iFilter-plugin to search within pdfs, based on an index.

This means XP-users never will get an indexed pdf-search! It also means it isn't neccesary to develop an indexed search within pdf-exchange-editor.
Or in short: It will propably never come!
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello bredpitt,

Microsoft themselves stopped support for XP 5 years ago (on 8 April 2014), and regrettably - the time has come that we also needed to move our products to newer technologies that are not supported by XP, and as such - we had to also officially stop supporting it ourselves.
It is a 18 year old operating system now, so it has served it's time.

We might introduce indexed search in the future, but it is not available in the first V8 build indeed.

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Timur Born »

Timur Born wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 10:11 am
Ivan - Tracker Software wrote:Well, I guess that the Editor is not just among the fastest, but our way to represent search results is way better than others provide.
Can you please explain what's wrong with our representation?
Hello Ivan, thanks for chimming in and sorry for taking so long to answer. All of the below points were already posted by me, some as far back as 2012 when OS X' free Preview already offered most of the requested search result features: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=13894

Highlighting of search results in the text was implemented since then, which is a good thing. I can also use the proximity option to get single page result entries instead of getting one result entry per word found (sometimes half a dozen on a single page).

But what's still missing:

- !!! Option to order results by relevance (based on number of hits per page, headlines, table of content) or at least by just number of hits per page !!!

Simple chronological ordering of search results in a document of hundreds or thousands of pages doesn't help half as much as proper result ordering would do.

- Option to show thumbnails of search results, preferably with highlighted results inside the thumbnail. In a big document I often recognize target pages by their overall layout, thumbnails would save us having to read and click through dozens of search results in order to find the correct one.

- Per tab search results! Currently Editor only displays one single (!) search result window, regardless of how many document tabs are open. When you switch to a different document tab then search results will not switch. In order to get per document search results you have to put each document in its own window or start a new search whenever you need results of a different tab.
Any news on this (years old) front?
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Timur,

I'm afraid that there's no news here. This feature is quite complex and we've had much higher priority items to attend. I'll ask if the dev team have anything for us, but I suspect they won't at this time.

Thanks,
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Timur Born »

I can understand priorities, but given that I already had properly sorted search results in OS X' Preview as early as 2009 one might wonder why Windows PDF viewing is still dwelling in the digital stone ages?! And I suspect that Preview had this even before I got my first Mac.

The first time I humbly asked for improvements in this area was in 2012: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=13894

Meanwhile even tablet based PDF viewers offer better search results. Personally I am using PDF Expert 6 and did not update to 7 yet, specifically because 7 is worse with searches (performance and result sorting) for the time being.

And frankly, I do not understand how proper search (results) can be so low priority for all PDF viewers out there. We are working with text based data, sometimes hundreds and thousands of pages in size. Proper search should be just as important to PDF as it is to the World Wide Web.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Timur,

We have a very limited set of resources available to us and, based on what we deal with day-to-day, this simply cannot be considered a high priority. Were it a simple thing to implement, we would give it a high priority and implement it because we do definitely see the value in the feature, but it isn't simple; it's quite complex and very time consuming and, therefore, would take up far too much of our resources for very little commercial return, all the while crippling other areas of development that are in higher demand.

I obviously cannot speak for the industry at large, but we have nowhere near the developmental scope of Adobe, so we don't have the resources to divert. I'm afraid that as it stands, it's not something that is likely to happen soon. I wish I could give you better news, but unless demand for this significantly increases, this isn't going to change.

My apologies.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Timur Born »

Adobe does not offer anything better than chronological search results either and its search options are considerably worse than Editor's.

That being said, sorting by simple number of hits per page (text) would already be useful, especially since Editor is counting its hits anyway.

I will have a look at current desktop search engines, maybe they evolved enough to jump to pages of opened PDF files directly. Adobe Reader seems to support that, since Editor offers to open a PDF in Reader at the same page and zoom setting. Does Editor support the same when being called externally?
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Timur Born »

I have to ask directly: What is keeping you from offering "per tab" search results? It works for the left panel (thumbnails, content, etc), so it should work for the right panel as well.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello Timur,

The Editor should support external page calls, unless of course you have the "respect document" or "restore previous" view settings enabled, in which case the Editor will respect the document or restore the previous view (assuming the document has been opened by the editor in the past).

The only thing ever keeping us from implementing any popular feature is exactly as Will said above, a combination of "Very limited resources" and "complexity to implement" is always the issue limiting development speed.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by kauenegrao@gmail.com »

+1 for this feature.

Everyday I need to do multiple searches in a 3000 pdfs library, and that task takes a lot of time. I love the advanced search in PDF X-Change Editor, but it would be way better with the index feature.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Tracker Supp-Stefan »

Hello kauenegrao,

Thanks for adding your voice here!
As stated above - we will look at this - but will have to consider this carefully before we can commit to it!

Regards,
Stefan
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Timur Born »

The property pane changes between tabs, the thumbnail pane changes between tabs, the content pane changes between tabs, the bookmark pane changes between tabs. Please make the search pane change between tabs, too, as in keeping the results per tab intact.
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello Timur,

Thank you for the suggestion, but I must ask that you keep the discussion in this thread related to the topic at hand (Search indexing). I have ensured that everyone in this thread is a "Voice" for the feature request on search indexing mentioned above. Individualized results per tab is an item that has been discussed in the past and should hopefully be seeing some action in the future.

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by igorlima »

Just spent 1 and a half hour searching for a term in all my pdf files. I'm in very much need of index searches. Would be very pleased if this was added. Was there any progress in this issue?
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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, igorlima

Unfortunately, nothing new as of yet.

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Re: Fast Search Using Index

Post by Ovg »

igorlima wrote: Thu Nov 04, 2021 11:03 am Just spent 1 and a half hour searching for a term in all my pdf files.
Windows index search doesn't works?


20211104_215424.png
20211104_215101.png
It seems working for me ...
It's impossible to lead us astray for we don't care even to choose the way.
PDF-XChange PRO, 10.1.1 (Build 381) / W7 SP1 x64
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