How to search inside PDFs with Windows Search?

Question

I'd like to use Windows Search for searching through multiple PDFs in one go, but I see that in the Indexing Options' Advanced Options screen, PDF files don't have a registered IFilter:

What is an IFilter, and where can I get the appropriate one?

Answer 1

IFilters allow Windows Search to search within file contents.

Here are three popular PDF IFilters^†:

• Foxit PDF IFilter (commercial)
• TET PDF IFilter (free/commercial)
• Adobe PDF IFilter (32-bit / 64-bit) (free)

After installing one, you should be able to search within PDF files in the same way that you can for other types of files.

_{†:This article from 2009 has performance numbers, but they may not apply to current versions of the filters.}

Answer 2

An alternative way to search through PDFs is to use the search function of PDF-XChange Viewer. It does not need indexing neither. This is my choice.

You can install the portable version. Hit Ctrl Shift F to get the search dialog:

Answer 3

You can use Mendeley; it's free.

First, add your PDF files and index them. After that, you can search them with auto-complete search.

• You can also add notes on the PDF files with it.
• If you have a lot a lot PDF files, sometimes RAM overflows when you try to index if this happen, just decrease count of PDF files.
• Be careful, Mendeley actually is an academic program for reference system (yes, also you can use it for adding references to your Word document. I used it when I wrote my PHd Thesis; it was wonderful), so it will try to upload your PDF files to its server. If you want to work offline, change Mendeley's internet options and give it a wrong/offline proxy IP (like 127.3.0.1) . Then you can work with it off-line. NOT: You can also search in HTML or word files with Mendeley.

Answer 4

PDF XChange Viewer, which has a free version available, comes with a built-in iFilter.

Answer 5

Maybe little free tool Pasco from Microsoft Store?

Pasco is a software whose main task is to search for pages in a text (pdf) containing a specified phrase. As the software indexes ebooks, the search result is displayed immediately. Pasco is not only a search engine but also a convenient ebook reader.

Answer 6

Windows 10 has made great optimizations in content search, its goal is to do the search as convenient as Mac. So, if you are using Windows 10, you can build an index between to speed up the search speed, although this process is very slow and long.

For other earlier versions of Windows, you may need other third-party tools, such as: Docfetcher, Anytxt, are free and easy-to-use tools. Good luck.

Answer 7

I'm using W10 22H2 with the January 2024 updates, with Adobe Reader 23.008.20533 installed.

Indexing file types show PDF and PDFXML are checked (enabled).

I found I had to turn on "Index properties and file contents" because mine was off.

As mentioned above, installing Adobe Reader or one of the other readers makes it so iFilter does not have to be separately installed.

Other PDF readers may make that happen too.

Answer 8

You can sort, filter pdf files based on title, pages etc using this shell extenion Debenu

Additionally, this portable application extracts all data from pdf files and produces a tabluar output which you can use in your workflow pdfinfogui