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Any Windows offline note taker apps that allows to import MS Office (msg, docx, xlsx) and pdf files and search within them?
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Posted by dan7000
Oct 21, 2015 at 08:46 PM
MotionTwelve wrote:
Thank you for the tips. I just finished test driving Zoot, The Brain
>and UltraRecall and seems like all of them perform some sort of file
>conversion to extract metadata. Therefore, you don’t get to see the
>attached files in their original form when previewed inside. They tend
>to get distorted. UltraRecall also relies on MS Office, similar to
>another outliner called TreeProjects.
>Although more of a document manager, Lucion FileCenter utilizes Oracle
>Outside In Viewers that virtually display document files in their
>native format. However, it doesn’t have a rich text editor for note
>taking. I think this is showing a big gap that not too many developers
>have been considering to fill in. :-(
>What makes me wonder even more, how could a software giant like
>Microsoft not see this need with OneNote. All they’ve done is fake it
>by converting imported documents to images. What a joke.
I think I must have misread your initial post. I thought you were looking for applications that 1) import .doc and .pdf and others; and 2) search in those files. I think people here have suggested a number of applications that do both of those things. But now I think I understand that my saying “import” maybe you meant also “preview and edit’? And you want something that allows editing Office docs *without* MS Office installed (and Acrobat docs without Acrobat pro installed)? I assume that you don’t want Office installed because it sounds like that’s what you find deficient about Ultrarecall? And it has to do this all offline? If so I see why you are having trouble finding it. I suspect that developers would not be inteested in filling this need because it sounds like a very unusual set of requirements for which there would be maybe a market of 1. Generally the type of user who is interested in powerful information management will also have MS Office installed and will be online.
Please clarify if I am misunderstanding your requirements.
Note that if I’m wrong and you are not looking for preview/edit functionality then in addition to those others have mentioned, Evernote does what you are asking for but you have to go online.
If you are OK having office installed then why not try Outlook? It does basically everything you are looking for if I understand correcly.
Posted by MotionTwelve
Oct 21, 2015 at 10:07 PM
dan7000 wrote:
>I think I must have misread your initial post. I thought you were
>looking for applications that 1) import .doc and .pdf and others; and 2)
>search in those files. I think people here have suggested a number of
>applications that do both of those things. But now I think I understand
>that my saying “import” maybe you meant also “preview and edit’? And
>you want something that allows editing Office docs *without* MS Office
>installed (and Acrobat docs without Acrobat pro installed)? I assume
>that you don’t want Office installed because it sounds like that’s what
>you find deficient about Ultrarecall? And it has to do this all offline?
> If so I see why you are having trouble finding it. I suspect that
>developers would not be inteested in filling this need because it sounds
>like a very unusual set of requirements for which there would be maybe a
>market of 1. Generally the type of user who is interested in powerful
>information management will also have MS Office installed and will be
>online.
>
>Please clarify if I am misunderstanding your requirements.
>
>Note that if I’m wrong and you are not looking for preview/edit
>functionality then in addition to those others have mentioned, Evernote
>does what you are asking for but you have to go online.
>If you are OK having office installed then why not try Outlook? It does
>basically everything you are looking for if I understand correcly.
As far as I know, Outlook can mainly index attached MS Office files but doesn’t highlight search keyword hits inside of the documents. Also, it won’t index PDFs and many other popular formats. As you’ve already mentioned, the only one that does this properly with PDFs is Evernote but I would like to avoid having to sync with the cloud. However, I believe last time I checked Evernote was also limited with how it handled MS Office formats.
To clarify, I am not looking for a note taker which can edit all of these complex document formats internally. That would be asking for something almost impossible. For that purpose, of course, it’s best to use the designated apps. What I am looking for, however, is a way to quickly search for keywords inside of the attached files straight from the note taker app and visually see the results inside. Once I find a particular file that I want to edit, I can then easily open it with the native app and apply the changes which will then be re-indexed by the note taker app.
Maybe including these features as addons would be a good idea since many indexers and file viewers can be integrated in such a way (DTSearch, Oracle Outside In, Apache Lucene, etc).
I am crossing my fingers that MyInfo v7 might include something similar. I think it would really open up doors how we mange today’s information overload.
Posted by Orchid
Oct 22, 2015 at 02:16 PM
You could try ELOoffice
https://www.elo.com/wcm/en/products/elooffice
It is more a DMS than a notetaker but will do what you want to do.
Posted by MotionTwelve
Oct 22, 2015 at 02:44 PM
Orchid wrote:
You could try ELOoffice
>https://www.elo.com/wcm/en/products/elooffice
>It is more a DMS than a notetaker but will do what you want to do.
From their website, it looks very promising. I will be trying it later today. Does it also provide rich text editor to take quick notes/tasks?
Thank you!
Posted by dan7000
Oct 22, 2015 at 08:35 PM
Yes, programs that highlight search hits n various document types are rare in the desktop software world. Law firms use that type of software all the time to review documents, but most of the types used by law firms are hosted or at least network-based and of course really expensive. One of the simplest—which maybe could run on a local desktop - is called Concordance.
But try Qiqqa. It is made to host documents online but when you download the client it lets you use one “local library” of documents. If you just use that one and delete the cloud-based libraries it never goes online, as far as I can tell. It stores, indexes and searches all types of documents, and lets you add annotations to documents and tag both documents and annotations. Unfortunately with a library of about .5 GB of PDFs it started getting to slow to use at all on my machine, so I stopped using it.
Now that I understand what you are looking for I totally agree: this is a gap in the available software that is prime for someone to fill. Software that can search and show search hits in a native-looking preview of the document, plus allow notes and tags, is way overpriced—and yet it does hardly more than what Evernote does. Time for some disruption in that market.