Outliners indexing external links

Posted by Cyganet
Apr 20, 2024 at 01:30 PM

What an interesting question! I decided to check with the outliners that I have access to. My assumptions about your use case
- you’re on Windows
- you would like to find a PDF that is linked (not embedded) in the outliner
- you would like to have a highlight of the matching text inside the PDF

Here are my findings:

Yes
===
Zotero: will find text inside a PDF that is linked to a Zotero item. Will not show you the matching text
UltraRecall: if you drag a PDF into it, it turns it into plain text (all lowercase) note that is searchable and the search term is highlighted. UR retains a shortcut to the original PDF in its URL field

No
===
UpNote
InfoQube
ConnectedText
Zim-wiki
The Journal
TheBrain
CherryTree
Trilium Notes
Obsidian

Non-outliners
===========
Windows explorer (search file contents) - will show the PDF but not highlight content
OneDrive search (on both web and Android) - will find the PDF but not highlight content

I hope this is useful for your search.