[Office] Office files content indexing

[shinigamian]

Hey guys. New guy to Linux desktops here. Been trying different distros and desktops environments in the last month or so. So far love Ubuntu on KDE (Kubuntu). Would use it as main OS hands down, but cant find a way to get office files content indexed. I really need this to work and is something Windows does as default (even indexes content of files attached to emails).
I activated the "search file content" option on Baloo settings, but only works with simple files, like txt or so, not with libre office / MS office files like odt, xlsx, docx, etc. Is there a way to index the content of office files on Kubuntu? Or any other way to make office files content searchable from file manager?

[claydoh]

I do not know. I have many pdf, txt, .doc, epub, and odt files, and a small number of docx, and I can definitely search by content and find results from them. Maybe it takes a bit longer to go through everything?

[GreyGeek]

Hey guys. New guy to Linux desktops here. Been trying different distros and desktops environments in the last month or so. So far love Ubuntu on KDE (Kubuntu). Would use it as main OS hands down, but cant find a way to get office files content indexed. I really need this to work and is something Windows does as default (even indexes content of files attached to emails).
I activated the "search file content" option on Baloo settings, but only works with simple files, like txt or so, not with libre office / MS office files like odt, xlsx, docx, etc. Is there a way to index the content of office files on Kubuntu? Or any other way to make office files content searchable from file manager?

There exists an application called "tracker". It also has a GUI and other components. All are in the repository.

Try it out. IF it fits your criteria then great, otherwise give DocFetcher a try, links below.

Tracker is described here:
https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/P...direct=Tracker


DocFetcher is here:
http://docfetcher.sourceforge.net/en/index.html

It's not in Neon's repository but it may be in Bionic's. Regardless, a zip file download is available:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/doc...e.zip/download

The readme.txt in the zip file states:

Linux:
Launch the program by double-clicking on DocFetcher-GTK2.sh or
DocFetcher-GTK3.sh. The difference between these two scripts is that
DocFetcher's user interface will be based either on GTK2 or on GTK3. With some
desktop environments, only GTK2 works, while with some others, only GTK3 works.

Thus, you'll have to try one script, and if DocFetcher doesn't start or the GUI
is behaving strangely, you'll have to try the other script.

If with either script DocFetcher doesn't start or a text editor shows up, make
sure the executable flag has been set on the respective file. If that doesn't
work either, you might see a helpful error message if you start the script from
from the terminal.

[claydoh]

Also, it might be worth trying to reindex files ?
https://community.kde.org/Baloo/Configuration

[GreyGeek]

Also, it might be worth trying to reindex files ?
https://community.kde.org/Baloo/Configuration

I think he tried that:

I activated the "search file content" option on Baloo settings, but only works with simple files, like txt or so, not with libre office / MS office files like odt, xlsx, docx, etc.

[chimak111]

No problem here searching within a .doc file using baloo.

Maybe post the contents of ~/.config/baloofilerc?.

[shinigamian]

Thank you for your help guys!. Actually figured out the problem. It's only indexing content of new created/copied files, not existing ones. Didn't find an option for that on ~/.config/baloofilerc, but no brainers. Just overwrote all my documents and problem solved.

[chimak111]

Thank you for your help guys!. Actually figured out the problem. It's only indexing content of new created/copied files, not existing ones. Didn't find an option for that on ~/.config/baloofilerc, but no brainers. Just overwrote all my documents and problem solved.

That's not been my experience: files I created years ago are indexed both by name and content.