Search Attachments?

[Layne]

Can I search within attached files in Access 2007?

I'd like to create a database (Access 2007) to store references as I work on
my PhD. Besides the normal referece document info, I'd like to attached the
document itself to each record (mostly .pdf). Will I be able to create a
query that searches within the (.pdf) file itself?

 

[Andy Smith]

Interesting question! It would definitely involve some pretty sophisticated
VBA coding. You'd have to write a public function SearchPDF which would
accept the text to find and a PDF object or reference, and that function
would have to use some registered Acrobat object (see Tools / References in
the VBA environment) to open the PDF and search for the text. For details,
start by calling Adobe's tech support. If you can get that function working,
then you can use it as a filter in any query.

Another much simpler way, which would involve more work, is to store all
text in each PDF in a Memo field in your database rather than the PDF itself
in an OLE object. So, whenever you come across a new PDF, open Reader,
select and copy all its text, go back into Access, open the reference-info
table, and paste it into a Memo field, Then there would be no need to store
the PDF, only the reference, and you could use just the Instr function, Like
operator, etc.