Reader Russ had a great suggestion and commented as follows:
I enjoy your columns and blogs and have benefitted from your recommendations to set firm sell points. My question/request is on finding information on a specific fund or ETF within the stat sheets.
It would seem very helpful if there would be a search feature that one could enter the name or symbols for a fund/ETF to see if it is in the stat sheet rather than scanning through all the pages to see if it is there. Just a suggestion to speed things up.
This would indeed be helpful for many readers, especially as the offerings of ETFs increase. Since the StatSheet files are in PDF format, I am not aware whether or not you can actually search through them.
I found a program on the internet called Powergrep that will actually do that and a lot more. I have not tried it so I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but they offer a free trial.
If you are aware of an easy way to search through PDF files, please share it with me.
Comments 10
I have used three pdf Readers/Viewers. They each have a Search/Find Box at the Top of the pdf Browser.
I failed to mention the name of the three pdf Readers/Viewers.
They are Adobe Acrobat Reader, PDF-Xchange Viewer and Foxit Reader.
Uli, why not provide two "master lists" for ETFs and MFs and sort them alphabetically. This way one could quickly scroll through and see if the desired symbol is in the list. Reminds me of the Apollo Mission and the One-Million-Dollar-Pen. The Russian solution: Use a pencil.
In Windows just type Ctrl>F, then your search. In Macs, just type Command>F, then type your search. This is true in Adobe Reader and most other programs.
I use Chrome as my web browser and the spreadsheets open as a PDF page in the browser. Use the command Ctrl + F and this will open a "Find" box that will allow you to type in a query and search the PDF file.
I hope this helps.
Craig
There is also a way to convert to excel:
http://www.pdftoexcelonline.com/success_page.htm
And a continuing thanks to Ulli….
As previous comments mentioned you can search using Acrobat Reader. However, it would be beneficial to be able to sort, filter and manipulate in a spreadsheet. Publishing in Excel as well would help as you could then link it to a second Excel sheet that contains your sell points and other information. Acrobat does allow you to export to Excel, but I find only one page vs the entire statsheet. Understand not everyone has Excel. Think publishing in text format could be the most flexible option. A reader can open the text file in almost any software. When you open in Excel the data automatically be separated in rows and columns. You can see this by going to a text file for site listed below. Save the text file to your hard drive and open in Excel. I looks great and can be sorted/filtered. I also tested on a Mac using NeoOffice (free) and it imports a text file into a spreadsheet and keeps the format.
v/r,
Jeffrey Smith
Example:
http://www.q5research.com/Q5Select.txt
Thanks for all your helpful comments. I appreciate it.
Ulli…
Hi Ulli,
A simple method to search your ETF/Mutual Fund lists PDF files is as follows. When your free newsletter comes out each Friday night or by going into the Fund Tracker Archives just simply do the following. Click on link to StatSheets then scroll down to the cataegory of interest such as General Domestic Equity Mutual Funds/ETF and click on the PDF link. When the list opens up look for a box at the top of the page that has the word Find in it. Simply type in the symbol that you want to look up and if it is on the list it will show up and the symbol will be highlighted. If the symbol entered is not on the list a box will pop up telling you that the reader has finished searching the document and no match was found.
Hope this helps your readers.
Larry Guyer
For Acrobat Reader (version 9.3)- If the Find search box does not show on the tool bar right click on a blank area of the tool bar to the right of all the tool icons. Then click on Find. It will then show on the tool bar.