Full text search in PDF documents does not work

Workspace
1

We installed Workspace using the instructions “Installing ONLYOFFICE Workspace using the provided script” on Debian 10.

The community server is in version 11.5.4.1582.

Full text search works only for Office documents, not for PDF documents!

For testing, we also installed Workspace using the “Installing ONLYOFFICE Workspace using Docker Compose” guide on Debian 10.

The community server is in version 11.0.0.1458

Here the full text search in PDF documents works fine!

Is the full text search in PDF documents still present in the current versions or are we doing something wrong?

We are currently looking into adding Workspace and Docs to our portfolio for our customers. Searching PDF documents is a very important requirement.

2

Hello @geowol
There’s no way to use full text search feature with PDF files since this is non-editable file format at the moment. I’m a little bit surprised that you were able to get it works on the older version of Community server. Please double check the situation and provide us with details.

3

This is really very easy to reproduce. Debian 10 installed without any GUI at all. Docker and Docker-Compose are installed.

Now it is enough to install Groups (docker-compose.groups.yml) according to instructions. But I also tested it with Workspace (docker-compose.workspace.yml).

cd /opt/
mkdir containers
cd containers
git clone https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/Docker-CommunityServer
cd Docker-CommunityServer/
cp docker-compose.groups.yml docker-compose.yml
docker-compose up

After registration, I simply enabled full-text search and upload a corresponding PDF document named “Suchdokument.pdf” with the String “7777” in its content. Searched for the content “7777” and voila: found.

OO-search
OO-search1094×344 33.6 KB

As I understand it, it should not matter for the search if PDF documents are editable.
If I open a PDF with Onlyoffice Docs, I can search for content in it as well.

4

Thank you, we are checking the situation. When we have something to share, I’ll update this post.

5

Hello @geowol
Sorry about it. The current situation is that we removed full text search feature for pdf files in one on of the older version of Community server in order to reduce the amount of data. You are absolutely right, on older versions this feature works.

I can’t say yet if this function will be returned.

I sincerely apologize for this situation.

6

Thank you for your efforts.

It is a great pity that this feature has been disabled. In my opinion it is a very important feature for business use of ONLYOFFICE Workspace.

Maybe you can re-enable this feature as an option. Of course with a clear notice for administrators that this will create more data.

7

We need sometime to discuss it internally. I will update this post when I get any news.

1 Like
8

Hello again @geowol
We added your idea to internal tracklist (internal number - 54998). We will try to implement it (optional switching-on of full text search for different formats) in one of the next version of Community Server.
Unfortunately, I cannot provide you any guaranties of release of this idea at the moment.

1 Like
9

Good morning everyone,
I realized that the full text search for PDF files does not work only today and before making a report on the Forum I wanted to check if there was already a communication made by other users.
Reading the previous posts, I regret that this feature is currently unavailable and that it is not known if it will be added in the future.
This is very disappointing to me as we use this specific function a lot in the company.
At the moment we use Alfresco and I am considering migrating to Onlyoffice, but at the moment I am honest I do not see the conditions to be able to do so.

10

Hello @maxbon
We know about this situation (54998) and we are still working on it. I’ll update this thread when we have any news.