Optimize Word document keyword search

Question

I\'m trying to search for keywords across a large number of MS Word documents, and return the results to a file. I\'ve got a working script, but I wasn\'t aware of the scale

Answer 1

Right now you're doing this (pseudocode):

foreach $Keyword {
    create Word Application
    foreach $File {
        load Word Document from $File
        find $Keyword
    }
}

That means that if you have a 100 keywords and 10 documents, you're opening and closing a 100 instances of Word and loading in a thousand word documents before you're done.

Do this instead:

create Word Application
foreach $File {
    load Word Document from $File
    foreach $Keyword {
        find $Keyword
    }
}

So you only launch one instance of Word and only load each document once.

---

As noted in the comments, you may optimize the whole process by using the OpenXML SDK, rather than launching Word:

(assuming you've installed OpenXML SDK in its default location)

# Import the OpenXML library
Add-Type -Path 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Open XML SDK\V2.5\lib\DocumentFormat.OpenXml.dll'

# Grab the keywords and file names    
$Keywords  = Get-Content C:\scratch\CompareData.txt
$Documents = Get-childitem -path $Path -Recurse -Include *.docx  

# hashtable to store results per document
$KeywordMatches = @{}

# store OpenXML word document type in variable as a shorthand
$WordDoc = [DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging.WordprocessingDocument] -as [type]

foreach($Docx in $Docs)
{
    # create array to hold matched keywords
    $KeywordMatches[$Docx.FullName] = @()

    # open document, wrap content stream in streamreader 
    $Document       = $WordDoc::Open($Docx.FullName, $false)
    $DocumentStream = $Document.MainDocumentPart.GetStream()
    $DocumentReader = New-Object System.IO.StreamReader $DocumentStream

    # read entire document
    $DocumentContent = $DocumentReader.ReadToEnd()

    # test for each keyword
    foreach($Keyword in $Keywords)
    {
        $Pattern   = [regex]::Escape($KeyWord)
        $WordFound = $DocumentContent -match $Pattern
        if($WordFound)
        {
            $KeywordMatches[$Docx.FullName] += $Keyword
        }
    }

    $DocumentReader.Dispose()
    $Document.Dispose()
}

Now, you can show the word count for each document:

$KeywordMatches.GetEnumerator() |Select File,@{n="Count";E={$_.Value.Count}}