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I am a google drive user(not a API user or developer). I want to know is there any way to search inside the file contents. I know the filenames can be searched with search bar. But i couldn't find a way to search inside files.

For example,

I have a file Names.txt which contains 

Oracle
Microsoft
IBM

How can i get,say Microsoft, just by searching?

I got this information

useContentAsIndexableText   boolean     Whether to use the content as indexable text. (Default: false)

from

https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/files/insert

and nothing more helpful :p

Any idea, how to get the file content by searching?

Ajeeb.K.P
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    You say you're *not* an API developer - are you trying to *become* one, or are you just trying to do this from the web UI? It's not clear whether this is a programming question or not... – Jon Skeet Oct 17 '14 at 05:58
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    If you are asking about the web UI, as @JonSkeet says, it's offtopic for SO. But I just tried it and a plain search from the web gui **does** search inside the files. Also more details about UI search capabilities here https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375114?hl=en&p=empty_search_ww&rd=1 – harmic Oct 17 '14 at 06:12
  • Thanks for Interest of both of you.I found my answer. You are right i was trying it from web UI. And it is not a programming question. – Ajeeb.K.P Oct 17 '14 at 06:17

3 Answers3

10

Actually, i found one way to sort the files which contains the text from the link below.

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375114?hl=en&ref_topic=2463645

That is by including the search term in in double quotes.

So if i search with "Microsoft". Then only files that contains Microsoft will be visible.

Ajeeb.K.P
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3

I think that you need some kind of UI to do a full-text content search in your GDrive. There is several tools to do it.

First, you can do it on your desktop with DTSearch or MetaSearch Secondly, you can use cloud based solution Findo

None of solutions fit me properly, so I decided to write my own cloud based document search engine - Ambar. As for now it's supports only Dropbox. But you can give it a try as well with manual uploads.

Ilia P
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You can use "" in the search box, neverthless if you have a lot of pdfs, convert it to doc format, this way you'll be able to look up information in books. Though I would recommend to hold your pdf files in your computer and analyze it with a pdf reader(For example PDF-XChange Viewer)

NikitQa
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