Search in attached files

[raoulwegat]

TXT, PDF, DOC, ALS, etc. This would actually be a huge feature.

[Bill_French]

I sort’a did this -

Airtable Search (Personal Edition - Free) Show and tell

I’ve been working on a search concept for Airtable that has kept me awake a few nights. One of the [many] problems with universal search (i.e., a search that spans multiple bases and multiple tables) is the complex types of fields and content you’ll find when the entire galaxy of data possibilities will be encountered. You have to embrace all that Airtable could ever store and in a way that is not only findable but indexable in a reliable and compressed manner. Another problem; Airtable is fun…

[Moe]

We built this extension that allows you to convert PDF to TXT on Airtable, so that attachments can be searched or filtered.

[Michael_Tchong]

Why is this still not possible? I want to create a content database in Airtable but would like to attach text files instead of laboriously pasting the text in a field, surprised Airtable can’t do that! It supports regex searches and what not, but can’t search attachments, DOH! :smirk:

[Bill_French]

Michael_Tchong:

Why is this still not possible?

Many reasons.

Michael_Tchong:

would like to attach text files instead of laboriously pasting the text in a field, surprised Airtable can’t do that!

You make it sound like these are the only two pathways to successful searching in the current Airtable feature set. It can do that and hundreds of users are doing that - where “that” is using Airtable as a comprehensive text and content management backend. Have you thought about automating text updates and management?

Michael_Tchong:

It supports regex searches and what not, but can’t search attachments, DOH!

You are conflating two very distinct aspects of findability; filtering and indexing.

While Airtable is pretty good about filtering and using a variety of formula functions to do so including the latest RegEx features, formulas work on fields, not full text or inverted indices and certainly not attachments. Since Airtable does not support full-text indexing, we are all presently confined to one dimension of a two-dimensional concept. unless – we do something more like this.

Indexing Attachments

This is yet another entirely complex layer of full-text indexing that needs to designed either by Airtable or third-party integrators. I have built search systems for clients and it requires a number of services and skills that are typically well outside the realm of no-code platforms. For example, indexing PDF and other binary file format documents require significant server time that needs to constantly craw the data set. Even text attachments must use an inverted index to remove stop-words and optimize discovery for boolean queries.