Search content inside OpenOffice documents

Help & Support
1

Hello
DO and also the Windows Explorer don't find text within OpenOffice documents with their 'Search containing text function'. Am I missing something or is this by design?
Kind regards

2

I don't know about Explorer but Opus doesn't understand the Open Office file format. Since OO documents are compressed it's unlikely that any text string would still be in the file as plain text, so Opus would not find it.

(The Opus viewer can display OO documents but it does so using Open Office's ActiveX component.)

3

In fact the OpenOffice is compressed. You can open an OO file with a zip Viewer. The compressed archive consists of different files and folders. The content is stored within the content.xml file, which is plain text. Therefore i hoped that the search inside archives option with DO would be successful, but no.
Do you see any possibility to make OO content searchable?

Kind regards
Nicolo

4

If you want it you could try requesting it but I doubt it's as simple as just unpacking the zip files (which Opus doesn't do as it doesn't know those extensions are zip files).

It may be XML inside but it's still not plain-text. There will be formatting between words, for example.

I'm surprised that OpenOffice doesn't install an IFilter or similar component which would allow anything that uses IFilter to search its content. Opus doesn't currently (but may do in the future), but Explorer does and it's the standard way to allow searching within complex file formats. (I think Vista may have introduced a new alternative to IFilter but I'd have to look it up.)

5

Thanks for the information
I found an IFilter here:
ifiltershop.com/staroffice-openo ... ilter.html

I have installed it, but till now i'm not sure if it indexind will occour.
Kind regards
Nicolo

6

If you add the OO file extensions to the Opus Zip preferences, the search inside zip files option should work.

7

If the desire is to make Opus Find search within OpenOffice files, I can't help.

If the desire is to find some way to search within OpenOffice files, ZipHunter ( pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,33375,00.asp ) may be of interest.

8

Thanks Jon
I did it, now when searching DO rises for each OpenOffice file the message 'A passwort is required to extract the file...'. I can skip each of this messages. The search results lists the content.xml files. So this is a solution but not realy comfortable.

9

[quote="nicolo"]Thanks for the information
I found an IFilter here:
ifiltershop.com/staroffice-openo ... ilter.html

I have installed it, but till now i'm not sure if it indexind will occour.
Kind regards
Nicolo[/quote]
Now the operating system's indexing service (Windows XP; i have the german version so i'm not sure if it's calling 'indexing service', in german 'Indexdienst') finds contents within OpenOffice files. But DO find dialog (simple or advanced) still doesn't list OpenOffice files when searching for content.

10

Update:
Now on Windows 7 (Home Premium edition, 64 bit), the Windows File Explorer finds contents within OpenOffice. But the DO search function still not.
Any advice?
Kind regards

11

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