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Search for PDFs with highlights [message #1105] Sat, 05 December 2020 02:50 Go to next message
mr3745
Messages: 2
Registered: December 2020
Junior Member
I'm wondering if it's possible to search your drive only for PDF's that you've made highlights in?

Using PDF Expert. I'm thinking there must be some metadata or something you can search for?
Re: Search for PDFs with highlights [message #1109 is a reply to message #1105] Wed, 16 December 2020 15:14 Go to previous messageGo to next message
FoxTrot Engineering
Messages: 404
Registered: April 2020
Senior Member
By default, FoxTrot uses Spotlight's metadata importer to extract contents and metadata to index from PDF files, and this does not seem to return annotations made using PDF Expert.

You can optionally use Xpdf to extract contents and metadata to index from PDF files, and it seems it can return the text of some annotations; however there does not seem to be a flag "includes annotations", so the answer to your question is probably "no".

To use Xpdf instead of Spotlight's importer for PDF files, press the command and option keys when launching FoxTrot, choose "manage third-party metadata importers", then check "prefer Xpdf" near the bottom of the window. Then rebuild your index. Some documents can be better handled by Xpdf, while some others can be better handled by Spotlight's importer.

You may consider using Finder tags, for example, to flag documents you annotated, then you can use FoxTrot's tag categorizer, or use [then apply filter] [tags] [...]


Jérôme - FoxTrot Engineering
Re: Search for PDFs with highlights [message #1114 is a reply to message #1105] Sat, 19 December 2020 00:45 Go to previous message
mr3745
Messages: 2
Registered: December 2020
Junior Member
Great, thanks for the reply.
I have tried using tagging on my Mac incidentally, but it's been broken for a few years now, not able to search for tags.
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