Searchable Word Documents Programming

We have a folder full of word documents that are examples for specific purposes. There's over 1000. The filenames are not always descriptive as some are just named AC120.doc. That document may be a thank you letter template.

We would like a way to search the document for keywords, like using a search term "Thank You" and it find all the documents with that word. My first guess would be to read the doc with PHP and then maybe regexp it but it seems like a lot of processing and memory. Another time consuming project would be for myself to go through each document and tag it and then create a tag reference database and just match search terms to the tags.

I figured there had to be a python, java, or VB program out there that allowed searching of keywords within word documents.

The next stretch would be that it would be nice to have a small preview of the results.

Is this possible and/or any recommendations?

My google searches seem to pull software that just recreates the windows search utility.

Important distinction: are you working with .doc or .docx?

if you are using windows then windows's search can help.
go to Search-> Documents(word processing, spreadsheet, etc.)

Click Use advance search option , it will open a new text box with label "A word or phrase in the document"

type the word and it will search any office document containing that keyword

They appear to mixes some .doc and .docx. Windows search was alright but really need more of a preview. Ideas?

Zealous, that was kinda my question and you're saying read them in with php and create a tag database which is what I was thinking but it just seemed like a lot memory and processing power.

We are actually trying the copernic desktop which appears to just extend windows search functionality but does provide a nice preview pane. This may work for the few that need it until perhaps I can clean it up into categories.

PHP? SQL? Javascript? That seems largely overkill for something like this.

devilwood: I'm assuming you're on Windows? You might want to consider using PowerShell to do this. I haven't done it personally but I know PS is easily capable of things like this. A quick search brings up a few promising results.

Got it. That's what I was looking for. Thanks for your help.