Having trouble finding a word in multiple files

[Chris Green]

On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 05:17:57AM -0400, Pat Brown wrote:
> 
> Unfortunately, none of those suggestions worked. Perhaps it's because
> the files I'm searching are either .doc, .docx  or .odt files. The
> Dropbox folder is at the root of my home directory and it is an actual
> folder that contains multiple folders under it.
> 
Yes, well, why didn't you say to start with! :-)

You can't (directly) search the above file types with grep, grep
searches for strings in *text* files, or at least in files where the
text you are looking for is stored 'as is'.

.docx is definitely a compressed format so a tool for searching it
will need to decompress the files (at the very least) before searching.

Isn't it possible to search multiple files with Libreoffice?  That
should manage the above file types.


All of this is why I steer well clear of non-text ways of storing what
is basically text.  I use reStructuredText and/or Dokuwiki's own
(text) markup language, both easy to search with grep.

-- 
Chris Green