Foxit PDF Editor enables you to define a collection of PDFs as a catalog and create a full-text index for the cataloged PDFs, allowing you to search that index through the Advanced Search feature. See also Searching PDF indexes.
Create a full-text index
- Click File > Index > Full-Text Index with Catalog > click the Full-Text Index with Catalog button.
- In the New Index Definition dialog box, input the index title and description.
- (Optional) Click the Options… button next to the Index Description box to do more settings.
Do not include numbers: If you don’t need to search for numbers in the document, select this option to exclude all numbers in the document text content from a PDF index, which can help make the search faster. If you change the current setting, the new setting only applies to new indexes created afterwards.
Do not warn for changed documents when searching: With this option unselected, if you search an index after any of the indexed documents have been changed, a message pops up when you click on the search results in the Search panel. If you change the current setting, the new setting only applies to new indexes created afterwards.
Custom Properties: This option allows you to include existing custom document properties in the index. Click Custom Properties, and a dialog box pops up. Then type the custom property, select a type and click Add. Repeat the steps to add more custom properties. These properties will appear as search options in the additional criteria in the Search panel so that you can limit the search by specifying the properties when you search the index.
XMP Fields: This option allows you to include custom XMP fields in the index. The custom XMP fields will also appear in the additional criteria in the Search panel when you search the index.
Stop Words: Allows you to specify words that you want to be excluded from the index search results. You can only add one stop word at a time. A stop word is case sensitive and contains up to 128 characters. (Tip: In case users trying to search strings that contain the stop words, you are recommended to remind users of the stop words.)
Structure Tags: Use this option to make specific leaf-element tag nodes searchable in tagged documents when you search the index.
Note: The settings above apply to the current index only. To apply these settings to all indexes, please do the settings in File > Preferences > Index.
- Under Include these directories, click Add to select folders that contain PDF files to be indexed. The paths to the selected folders will be added to the box next to the Add button. To remove a folder from the box, select the folder path and click Remove. (Note: The subfolders nested the selected folders will also be indexed. If you want to add files or folders from different drives, make sure you have enabled the Allow indexing on separate drives option in File > Preferences > Index.)
- Under Exclude these directories, click Add to select folders that contain PDF files you do not want to be indexed. The paths to the selected folders will be added to the box next to the Add button. To remove a folder from the box, select the folder path and click Remove.
- Click Build. Specify the location for the index file and click Save.
- The Index dialog box pops up, displaying the indexing process. Click Close when the process finishes. (Optionally, you can click Stop to cancel the indexing process, which will create a partially finished index. You can complete it by revising the index file later.)
- In the specified location, Foxit PDF Editor creates an index file (an XML file), a log file, and a folder which contains support files about the index contents. (Note: You can unselect the Enable logging option in File > Preferences > Index if you don’t want to create a log file.)
Revise an existing index
- Click File > Index > Full-Text Index with Catalog > click the Full-Text Index with Catalog button.
- In the New Index Definition dialog box, click Open to select an index you want to revise. After making changes to the index, do any of the following:
- After modifying the index title and description, click Save to save the changes to the index file itself.
- Click Save As to save the modified index file as a new index file. You can use it to build a new index.
- Click Build to create new index contents in the support folder to update the index, which may increase searching time if you make a large number of changes or repeat this action to update the index for many times.
- Click Rebuild to create a new index, overwriting the existing index file and the index contents in the support folder.
- Click Purge to delete the index contents in the support folder without deleting the index file. You can build a new index after making changes to the index file.
Schedule index updates
You can create a batch XML file (a text file that contains a list of platform-dependent catalog index file paths and flags) with Notepad and then use a scheduling application such as Windows Task Scheduler to schedule when and how often to automatically update a full-text index.
To create a batch XML file, do as the following:
- Open Notepad.
Type the file paths of FoxitPDFEditor.exe and the index file, and the flags (including /build, /rebuild, and /purge) to update the index. For example, to rebuild an index:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Foxit Software\ Foxit PDF Editor\FoxitPDFEditor.exe”
C: \Users\Administrator\Desktop\Index-1\Product Manuals.xml /rebuild
Save the text as a .bxml file.
Note: You need to select the Allow Index batch files (.bxml) to be run option in File > Preferences > Index to successfully schedule index updates.
Move indexed PDFs and their indexes
You may need to move some or all of the indexed PDF documents to another location. In an index, if the index file and the indexed PDF documents are stored in the same drive, relative paths exist between the index file and the folders that contain the indexed PDFs. If these relative paths remain unchanged, the index still works after moving the indexed PDF documents.
A relative path is a way to specify the location of a directory relative to another directory. For example, suppose one of the indexed documents (butterflies.pdf) are in “C:\Sample\A”, and the index file is in “C:\Sample\B”. Then the relative path to “butterflies.pdf” is “..\A\butterflies.pdf”. The relative path is more flexible, because if you move the entire “C:\Sample” directory to another location such as “E:\Sample” or “C:\Smith\Sample”, the relative paths to the indexed documents would remain valid, which makes the index still work.
Note: If the index file and the indexed PDF documents are stored in different drives, after you move the indexed PDF documents, the index will not work and you need to create a new index.
Whether the index file and the indexed PDFs are stored in the same drive or not, if the index does not work after you move the index file or the indexed PDFs, you need to create a new index. However, you can still use the original index file. First, move the indexed documents to the target location. Then put the index file in the new index folder, edit options and the directories in Include these directories and Exclude these directories as needed, and create a new index.