I need an easy way to 'google' through all my PDF files - anything like this exist? [duplicate]

Foxit Reader is a great PDF viewer that has a very useful, fast search engine. I have used it many times when looking for a keyword through hundreds of PDF documents. It is also free.

It is simple to search for a string of characters in multiple documents as follows:

  1. Click "Search" on the left side in the Find ribbon. Then a search bar will pop up on the right side.
  2. Type what you want to search for in the top text box and state which directory to search in.
  3. Click "Search".
  4. Done!

Use the native Windows-Search with a special "Filter" for PDFs, eg

Foxit:

  • Phantom-PDF: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/PDF_Editor/ ("Desktop PDF index capability integrated into Microsoft Windows search")
  • Server-Variant: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/products/ifilter/

Adobe:

There "should" be an IFilter for PDFs as part of Adobe Reader 9 and Adobe Reader XI:

  • 64bit version for AR-XI: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub/adobe/acrobat/win/11.x/PDFFilter64Setup.msi
  • 64bit version for AR9: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025

TET:

  • http://www.pdflib.com/shop/ifilter/

Include your Dropbox- or GoogleDrive-Folder into the search-index and done. This allows you to search directly from within Windows-Explorer. Read more about the options for the indexer:

  • How to search inside files on Windows 7?
  • How to get Microsoft Search to index common file types like .pdf and .pub

You may need to consider a reference manager like Mendeley.