[Solved] How to search for document content in Mint 18.3

[deanr72]

Hi all.

I can't seem to search for documents or their contents on Mint. I have Recoll on Ubuntu Mate which works perfectly but on Mint the search only comes up with a couple pdf documents not the docx files.

I installed SearchMonkey and the same - even files that I know contain the content words do not appear in the search. The files are all in my connected Dropbox file. Any idea why searching files works on Ubuntu Mate but not Mint?

[Cosmo.]

I don't know / use it, so only a shot in the dark: Look in synaptic, if there are recommended packages. Perhaps some libraries are missing.

Besides that you might be interested in DocFetcher.

[smurphos]

gnome-search-tool is a straightforward GUI filesystem search application that can search by filename or file contents. It's effective if not the fastest- it doesn't do any pre-indexing. I don't really understand why it's not installed by default. In Cinnamon at least there are preconfigured keyboard short-cuts for it.

apt install gnome-search-tool - the GUI will appear in the menu as 'Search for Files'

For something a bit more advanced you could give tracker a go - apt install tracker-gui. This does index the file-system for quick search results. If your using Cinnamon there is a tracker applet available for download via the Applets settings module for quick searches or it is possible to set up the menu search field to provide tracker results. In the menu it's GUI is 'Desktop Search' and it's settings GUI is 'Search & Indexing'

[deanr72]

I don't know what's going on. I've got Mint 18.3 on a laptop and a desktop and the only positive is that at least they are responding in exactly the same way. Unhelpfully.

Docfetcher will not open on either machine after clicking either of the execution files (yes, the linux ones not the windows ones). It works a treat on Mate so I know I'm doing it right.

Gnome-search-tool takes much too long searching to be useable - and then comes up with the message 'No Files Found'. Even searching for the rather usual words 'cabbage' and 'cuwhich I wrote in a text this morning so I know it's there!

I've added Dropbox to the index and 'applied' in changes in Tracker but when I enter a word into the search box the whole programme just seems to sit there doing nothing. There's no sign that it's actually searching for anything and the GUI is, erm, minimal, to say the least and doesn't offer any further insight.

This is really going to be a deal-breaker for me too because if I can't search the content of docs I won't be able to work effectively - a bit like today where I've managed to do very little because of this issue :-/. Grrr.

Thanks for the responses so far but any other ideas what I can do to search the content on .docx files on Mint?

P.S. Research tells me SearchMonkey doesn't actually search the content of texts so that's a no-go.

[smurphos]

Have you opened the advanced options in gnome-search-tool?

This search - limited to my Documents folder returned these results in less than a second.

Tracker needs a bit of time to build it's index to be useful - agreed the GUI is less than helpful.

[greerd]

Well, you could use grep from the terminal, something like:

Code: Select all

grep -r -l --include={*.pdf,*.docx} "search term" /path/to/base/search/directory/

where
-r => recursive
-l => list filenames
--include={*.pdf,*.docx} => optional, only search in pdf and docx files. (you can add more)
"search term" => search term with quotes
/path/to/base/search/directory/ => optional, but without this you should cd into the base directory of your search before running grep.

[altair4]

Just an FYI but enjoy gnome-search-tool while you can. It's been removed from the repository in Ubuntu 18.04: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2386714

It's a pity.

[deanr72]

This is what my gnome-search-tool looks like. And this is with the 'select more options' open. I can't see any way to access 'advanced options'.

I also notice there are no doc/docx files in your pic smurphos which are what I specifically need to search. Note: Tracker is coming up with hits now for the word 'rice' but once again only pdf files not docx.

Using the terminal is not really an option greerd - I appreciate the sentiment but that looks like scary nonsense that you've written there .

[Cosmo.]

gnome-search-tool is a fine tool, but is not able to read the content of office files, so forget it.

Regarding DocFetcher: Is a Java Runtime installed?
I wrote a tutorial about installing DocFetcher, it might be of help.

[smurphos]

Just an FYI but enjoy gnome-search-tool while you can. It's been removed from the repository in Ubuntu 18.04: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2386714

It's a pity.

tracker-gui is gone too - it looks like the newest tracker in Bionic is pretty much intended to be a Gnome-Shell only backend - https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Tracker ... ingStarted.

At least Cinnamon has got the https://github.com/glebihan/cinnamon-tracker-applet but the configuration of tracker will be via gsettings / dconf-editor.....

[deanr72]

Thanks for the link Cosmo but that's all well beyond me...

App Grid tell me Java Common is installed but I've no idea how to check to see whether it's running or not.

[Hoser Rob]

gnome-search-tool is a straightforward GUI filesystem search application that can search by filename or file contents. It's effective if not the fastest- it doesn't do any pre-indexing. I don't really understand why it's not installed by default. In Cinnamon at least there are preconfigured keyboard short-cuts for it.

apt install gnome-search-tool - the GUI will appear in the menu as 'Search for Files'
...

+1 on gnome-search-tool. I far prefer it to Catfish, which is often recommended too.

[deanr72]

Looks like problem solved!

From recoll menu go Help > Missing Helpers

There was a number of things listed as missing, speciifically:

Perl::Image::ExifTool,
antiword,
untex,
xsltproc

I found each of these listed in App Grid, installed them, rebooted Mint and rebuilt index in Recoll.

Now it is finding .doc and .docx files in the search. Phew!

Question is, of course, why weren't these installed with the Recoll package in the first instance?

[linaafryn12_]

.

How do you install them? recently i have the same problem too:(

[deanr72]

.

How do you install them? recently i have the same problem too:(

I installed this software centre and installed them directly from there: https://www.appgrid.org/

[dm999]

Thanks for the tip for Recoll, I needed a replacement for 'Everything' that I used for searching on Win 10.

I just installed it through the Software Manager, where I saw this comment in a review -

Just remember that to search in LO & MS Office files, you also need python-libxslt1 and python-libxml2 for Recoll v1.22 to 1.24, or python3-lmxl for 1.25 and newer.

Adding these worked for me and I'm able to search the content of Office files.

Cheers,
DM.