Search in office files on the command line with the free Open Source tool Swiss File Knife.

- download the free Swiss File Knife Base from Sourceforge.
- open the Windows CMD command line, Mac OS X Terminal or Linux shell.
- OS X : type mv sfk-mac-i686.exe sfk and chmod +x sfk then ./sfk
- Linux: type mv sfk-linux.exe sfk    and chmod +x sfk then ./sfk
  OS X and Linux syntax may differ, check the help within the tool.

sfk office file support

sfk can read Open Document Format office files,
which are a standard since 2007, with these
filename extensions:

.docx .dotx .dotm .docb .xlsx .xlsm .xltx .xltm 
.pptx .pptm .potx .potm .ppam .ppsx .ppsm .sldx 
.sldm .odt .ods .odp .odg .odc .odf .odi 
.odm .ott .ots .otp .otg 

sfk can not read older office file formats
like .doc .xls or .ppt.

supported commands:

  sfk ofind mydir "/myword/"
     search office and plain text files in mydir
     containing the word 'myword'.

  sfk ofind mydir "/foo*bar/"
     search foo followed by bar in the same line.
     for more infos type: sfk ofind

  sfk ofilter in.xlsx -+foo
     filter content of a spreadsheet table
     for lines containing 'foo'
     for more infos type: sfk ofilter

  sfk oload in.xlsx
     load and display content of in.xlsx

  sfk oload in.xlsx +xex "/*\tapple\t/*"
     find fields containing just 'apple'
     and get the whole row around.

  sfk oload in.xlsx +filt -spat -+\tapple\t
     same as above, using +filter.
     for more infos type: sfk oload

  sfk unzip in.xlsx -todir tmp
     extract all contents of in.xlsx
     into a folder tmp. -todir is important
     otherwise you end up with many files
     in the current folder.

  sfk zip -rel out.xlsx tmp
     recreate an office file out.xlsx
     from all contents in tmp.
     -rel is important to strip folder
     name 'tmp' from the content filenames.

read more about all sfk functions here.