Perl - Can PCRE search string in docx and xlsx files?

Hi,

I was asked to search string in 2007 Microsoft Word (.docx) and Excel (.xlsx) files. I used regex before, and I thought this would be a good tool to use.

I can search string "ABC" ( using [A][B][C] ) in 2003 Microsoft Word, but failed to search in 2007 Word and Excel. I even tried Unicode search using \x{0041}\x{0042}\x{0043} also failed.

Could someone please advice what did I do wrong or is it possible?

Thank you in advance

Tom

.docx and .xlsx files are zip-compressed. The odds of finding the original text in plain form are low.
Extract the archives and search the relevant file(s) for your text.

Thanks requinix.

Please forgive me for not making it clear ... when I created and saved a new 2007 Word/Excel document, it automatically stored file types as docx or xslx; i.e test.docx (Word) or test.xlsx (Excel).

Hope this clarifies

Thanks again

Tom

The strange thing is my regex works for 2003 Word (file type is doc )

Okay... That doesn't change anything.


They're different file types: .doc files are binary but the text content might not be compressed. Small and simple searches would probably work fine.

Thank you for your help, requinix.! Now I know I need to find an alternate solution.