Highlighten / Search many PDFs for keywords
Guide · Many files
Search many PDFs for many keywords — in one pass.
Spotlight and Finder can tell you which files mention one word. They can't tell you which file mentions all twelve of your keywords, how often, or where. Highlighten reads the whole folder and ranks every file by how many of your words it contains.
Step by step
Three steps.
- 1
Drop a folder
Highlighten reads every PDF, scan, Word, Excel, ODT, RTF, HTML and text file inside, including subfolders.
- 2
Type your keyword list
As many words and phrases as you need. Whole words, match case and ignore accents are one switch each.
- 3
Sort by coverage
Each file shows how many of your keywords it contains (for example 5/6) and the total matches. Click one to read every match in context.
What you get that search doesn't
A ranked table of documents, the keywords each one is missing, short snippets around every match, and a CSV export of the whole table for a spreadsheet.
Questions
How many files can it handle?
The free version reads up to 3 Word, text or HTML files at a time. Pro has no document limit and reads every format.
Are my files uploaded anywhere?
No. Everything is read and searched on your Mac.
Can I save my keyword lists?
Yes, with Pro: keep a list per project and switch with ⌘1–9.
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