Convert Large Document into searchable database

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Guest

I received a large document from a colleague containing study notes for
various topics. I'm looking for suggestions on the simplest and most
effective way of converting this word document into a database. I want to be
able to find relevant paragraphs of text using a multiple keyword search and
have all the results displayed in one place.

Dylan
 
Hi Dylan
I received a large document from a colleague containing study notes for
various topics. I'm looking for suggestions on the simplest and most
effective way of converting this word document into a database. I want to be
able to find relevant paragraphs of text using a multiple keyword search and
have all the results displayed in one place.
Click to expand...

This does not sound as an "easy project," given what we know about this
document. Any code that runs through the document must have a means to
separate the content into individual notes. In a document that was not
created with that goal in mind, there probably is no way to determine
what makes one part (where does it stop, where comes the next).

2cents
Robert
 
I don't think Word is designed to get you what you want, and as Robert says,
would be a big hassle.

You might look at notetaking programs, which I would expect to have built-in
features to make this type of search easier (and I would expect any of them
to accept text from Word smoothly). Perhaps MS OneNote? You might ask in
those forums whether this would be possible.

On the Mac, I might recommend DevonThink, which is advertised as an
"information manager", and I believe does things like this. Googling
"DevonThink windows" turns up something called EverNote, perhaps check that
out:
http://slackermanager.com/2005/03/i_still_dig_eve.html

Or converting it to PDF would allow a Mac user to use Preview's search
capability, which shows a listing in a task pane of the occurrences of a
single word, with the surrounding few words. Much less efficient, more like
an instant index, but could be helpful. Again, not sure if Windows Acrobat
offers something similar, may be worth checking.

EndNote, the bibliographic management software, has room for people to take
notes on readings, and may have decent search capabilities, I've never tried
them.
 
Do you want a 'simple and effective' solution, or do you want to use Word?
(given that you can't have both for this purpose)
 
Split the source document into paragraphs, save each as a seperate file,
then use Yahoo Desktop Search.
 
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