Search within PDFs

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23

I tend to link to pdfs rather than embed them in Agenda. This means I can search them with Spotlight.

I often also import them into Readwise Reader for highlighting.

24

Same here. I link to almost everything outside of Agenda rather than embed. About the only thing I embed are graphics that are needed within a note. Using a pdf editor allows me to deep link to a specific place using Hookmark; handy in long docs. Iā€™ve started using hook also for Agenda internal linking. I like the ability to have a ā€˜link libraryā€™ which includes all items to any selected link.

25

For saving highlights I recommend always using Readwise. Iā€™m currently working on a shortcut that fetches all highlights from sources in new notes, within a predefined project. Doing it using shortcuts is quite a challenge though, but I had some ideas.
Iā€™m a huge supporter of OCR, Evernote had a pretty good one, apple notes has it too. Maybe with new AI updates for siri we might see this tool available for devs. It is also a great solution for those that want to take handwritten notes and easily search for their stuff.

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26

+1 for this
Iā€™m currently playing with Apple Notes in iPadOS 18 and there I recognized again how helpful it is to be able to search through the standard search of the Notes-Tool.

Is this topic still on your agenda? :wink:

Best,
Tobi

27

Note that if you open an attached PDF, you can then search in it using Appleā€™s standard tools. Is that what you want?

Or do you want Agenda to index the contents of the PDF, so you can search with Agenda search and know that there is a match inside the PDF?

28

Iā€™d love to have the second option, Agenda to Index and show matches from my Agenda search inside a PDF / Picture etc., similar as it is in Apple Notes. I just find it really helpful, as I throw documents for research etc. in there and I know that a search looks through everything, including these documents.
Indexing and making handwritten notes searchable would be the cherry on top, but I get that this is a whole different thing to tackle, so for me personally thats only secondary

29

We could definitely add indexing of PDF content, but we would likely just bring up the quicklook of the PDF and you would have to search inside to find the exact match. We donā€™t have any PDF viewing capability inside Agenda, so for now it would just show you the attachment.

Weā€™ll take it along. Thanks for the feedback!

30

I donā€™t need PDF viewing capabilities. Itā€™s just useful to know that if Iā€™m searching, I can find my notes or any of the supporting documents with the specific keyword. In a perfect world if you could OCR PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and common image file types. I would never have to search outside of the Agenda app for anything meetings related.

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32

Thanks for the feedback! Weā€™ll take it along and see what we can do.

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