Search and highlight within MS Office Documents (e.g. MS Word)

[Uldis Z 4]

I'm surprised that Evernote can search and highlight the text found in pdfs but can't do this with let's say MS Word documents. If I have multiple 300-page documents attached to the note, it would be of a great value for me to find specific word/term within it while it's in the Evernote, but currently seems the only solution is to convert all of them into pdfs. Only then it will work. It's strange since in my simple mind OCR seems more complicated technology than just reading and highlighting text in a Microsoft Word document.

[DTLow 5,749]

29 minutes ago, Uldis Z said:

'm surprised that Evernote can search and highlight the text found in pdfs but can't do this with let's say MS Word documents.

My understanding is that Evernote search indexing includes office documents
It's listed as a paid account feature    Search for text in PDFs and Office docs.

[Uldis Z 4]

6 minutes ago, DTLow said:

My understanding is that Evernote search indexing includes office documents
It's listed as a paid account feature    Search for text in PDFs and Office docs.

Yes, that was my understanding too. That's why I'm on a Premium account. Unfortunately, Evernote can identify and highlight THE FILE where the text is found but not the specific line of text like it does in a pdf. I've attached a file for the reference.

[DTLow 5,749]

6 minutes ago, Uldis Z said:

Unfortunately, Evernote can identify and highlight THE FILE where the text is found but not the specific line of text like it does in a pdf. I've attached a file for the reference.

I have no information on the highlighting
You might want to open a support ticket with Evernote Support at     Contact Evernote Support

btw  You're showing the pdf with inline view, and the doc files with attachment view
On my Mac, I right-click on the file to change the view

[Uldis Z 4]

16 minutes ago, DTLow said:

I have no information on the highlighting
You might want to open a support ticket with Evernote Support at     Contact Evernote Support

btw  You're showing the pdf with inline view, and the doc files with attachment view
On my Mac, I right-click on the file to change the view

Yes, already contacted.

"Hi Uldis,

Thanks for following up.

You are correct in that searching for the term in the note will return the notes containing that term, but will not highlight the word in the search results.

You can suggest new ideas on our Evernote User Forum here:"

There's no way for me to change MS Word files to inline view. They automatically show up as attachments and right click doesn't provide any other options. 

That's why I'm suggesting a feature since it seems something many would benefit from.

[gazumped 12,215]

Easy fix is to print a document to searchable PDF and save it in the same note,  or roughly copy/ paste the content of a Word document the note body to which it is attached.  (Precision / layout not necessary - this is just to feed the search index.)

If you have a lot of existing notes / attachments,  just convert the content of search hits to PDFs as and when you need to.  The ones that are in active use will get converted,  the rest not.  And it saves spending some hours on a conversion that may not be necessary for some files.  A short-term slowdown will speed things up later.

I believe that Microsoft didn't make it easy to parse the content of a DOC or XLS file in the first place - then changed the protocol again for DOCX and XSLX in case they were being too helpful.

[DTLow 5,749]

1 hour ago, Uldis Z said:

There's no way for me to change MS Word files to inline view.

So, inline view of office documents is not an option in Windows.  I can see this being a block to highlighting search items  
You might want to submit a feature request for inline view; independent of the search/highlighting

[CalS 5,311]

54 minutes ago, gazumped said:

Easy fix is to print a document to searchable PDF and save it in the same note,  or roughly copy/ paste the content of a Word document the note body to which it is attached. 

Another easy fix is to open the document and Ctrl-F the text.

[gazumped 12,215]

29 minutes ago, csihilling said:

Another easy fix is to open the document and Ctrl-F the text.

Well if you're just going to be logical about it...

[Uldis Z 4]

10 hours ago, gazumped said:

Well if you're just going to be logical about it...

then I may as well keep them on my comp in folders - no advantage of using Evernote imho

[Uldis Z 4]

11 hours ago, gazumped said:

Easy fix is to print a document to searchable PDF and save it in the same note,  or roughly copy/ paste the content of a Word document the note body to which it is attached.  (Precision / layout not necessary - this is just to feed the search index.)

If you have a lot of existing notes / attachments,  just convert the content of search hits to PDFs as and when you need to.  The ones that are in active use will get converted,  the rest not.  And it saves spending some hours on a conversion that may not be necessary for some files.  A short-term slowdown will speed things up later.

I believe that Microsoft didn't make it easy to parse the content of a DOC or XLS file in the first place - then changed the protocol again for DOCX and XSLX in case they were being too helpful.

Yes, I guess I'll have to convert all into pdf before dragging to notes. With pdf it works just great... For now, guess no better solution.

[DTLow 5,749]

8 minutes ago, Uldis Z said:

then I may as well keep them on my comp in folders - no advantage of using Evernote imho

There is Evernote’s search feature

[Uldis Z 4]

55 minutes ago, DTLow said:

There is Evernote’s search feature

Windows can search within MS Word files.