Search for a word or phrase within illustrator documents

[Erin5FA3]

Hello,

I'm looking for a way to be able to search for a phrase within a folder full of .ai files. The phrase is typed out within one of the illustrator documents (not the file name). Both the regular finder search tool and Spotlight are no help as far as searching the text within illustrator files. Is there a plugin that anyone knows of? Or some other way?

Thanks,

Erin

[John Mensinger]

I instantly thought of the incredible deep search tool, Agent Ransack, but it's Windows-only. Some Mac alternatives mentioned, here, but I couldn't recommend one or the other.

https://formac.informer.com/agent-ransack

https://alternativeto.net/software/agent-ransack/?platform=mac

[Erin5FA3]

Thank you! I'll check these out.

[Kurt Gold]

That mainly depends on how you save your .ai files (PDF compatible, compressed or uncompressed) and how exactly you configure the Spotlight search.

A very good application that may almost find everything inside files is called "Alfred" (with the "in" command). It can do much more, but I can recommend it anyway.

Note that it may not be able to find things that are compressed or encrypted, of course.

[Erin5FA3]

They are PDF compatible and uncompressed. They are on a cloud based server however (if that makes a difference). 

Thanks! I'll check out Alfred.

[Kurt Gold]

That almost certainly is a crucial info that you are talking about some cloud server in this case.

As an experiment, try it with the same files on a local drive.