PDFKeeper
Open Source PDF Document Management
PDFKeeper is free, open source software that provides a storage and management solution for PDF documents.
PDFKeeper is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) Version 3.
Download and install from GitHub or FossHub or install via Windows Package Manager (winget install pdfkeeper).
About
PDFKeeper began as an idea to solve a personal document storage issue. With both digital and paper documents stored in many places, it was becoming a challenge to locate documents quickly, especially at tax time. What proved to be an even bigger challenge was locating a free solution that could store PDF documents in a free, full-text search ready, relational database that could be accessed by anyone on the local area network. In addition, I had a requirement to store notes in the database with the PDF document that would also be searchable.
In early 2009, after being unsuccessful in locating a solution, I started building PDFKeeper, an open-source application that would use a free, full-text search ready, relational database for PDF document and notes storage, targeted at the Small Office Home Office and Small Business community. To develop the application quickly, I decided to build it with Open Object REXX, a scripting language with GUI support that I was very familiar with from my OS/2 days. As for the database, I chose to use Oracle® Database XE since it was free and was capable of indexing PDF documents; but, it was my plan to expand database compatibility to other platforms over time.
Here are some development milestones by year: (for more details, please see the Changelog)
2009
The first version of PDFKeeper is released to the public on Google Code.
2010
PDFKeeper receives free testing services from nResult, a software testing company that was providing free software testing services to open-source projects; PDFKeeper is redesigned and rewritten as a WinForms application in VB.NET for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 using SharpDevelop.
2013
PDFKeeper moves to CodePlex; .NET Framework 4.0 is targeted; All documentation is replaced by new Help system; Installer is migrated from InnoSetup to Windows Installer using WiX Toolset.
2016
PDFKeeper moves to GitHub; Solution is migrated to Visual Studio 2013; .NET Framework 4.6.1 is targeted.
2017
Source code, user interface, help file, and installer are completely redesigned and rewritten; installation is now per-user.
2018
PDFKeeper Homepage is now online; the redesigned PDFKeeper is released with additional search capabilities; Oracle® Database compatibility is expanded to 18c, 12c, and 11g Release 2.
2019
PDFKeeper logo is redesigned; 10th year anniversary edition is released; Category and flag features are added; Oracle® Database compatibility is expanded to 19c and 18c XE.
2020
Solution is upgraded to Visual Studio 2019; .NET Framework 4.8 is targeted; 32-bit support is discontinued; User interface is redesigned to improve document searching; Source code goes through an extensive refactoring.
2021
Integrated, single user database option using SQLite is added; document records can be categorized by Tax Year; text annotations are now indexed; User Interface layout is changed; PDFKeeper is added to the Windows Package Manager manifest repository and can now be installed via winget; text from image-only PDF documents is now extracted using OCR and indexed.
2022
PDFKeeper source code is rearchitected into separate layers; Windows 10 (64-bit) or higher is now required; Oracle® Database compatibility is expanded to 21c and 21c XE; added Oracle® Cloud Autonomous Database 21c and 19c compatibility; added new features; OCR text extraction is improved.
Future Roadmap
2023 - The user interface will be moderately redesigned; all of the library (DLL) projects will be redesigned and rewritten in C#; some minor new features will be added.
2024 - For the 15-year anniversary, the user interface will be modernized along with all presentation logic being written in C#; the entire application will be upgraded from .NET Framework 4.8 to .NET 7.
To track progress, please visit the Project board on GitHub.
Thank you for reading!
Project Owner and Maintainer
If you wish to support PDFKeeper, please consider a donation to the project using PayPal, Debit, or Credit Card.
PDFKeeper is a volunteer software project that includes expenses paid out of pocket. Your donation will help pay those expenses and support future development.
Features
Store and manage PDF documents in a single-user or compatible, multi-user (on-prem or cloud) database where they’re indexed to provide full-text search functionality.
Upload PDF documents individually or in bulk. In addition, Upload Profile folders can be setup to allow for integration and automation.
Apply a category/tax year to selected documents and when PDF documents are uploaded.
Set the flag state on a selected document and when PDF documents are uploaded to mark for follow-up.
Add notes to a selected document that can include the date, time, and user account name. All notes can be edited and are indexed by the database.
Find documents by Search Term, Selections (Author/Subject/Category/Tax Year), or Date Added. In addition, flagged documents or all documents can be listed.
With PDFKeeper, the following functions can be performed on a selected document: PDF viewing with the bundled or default viewer; PDF bursting; flag document state management; notes viewing and editing; keywords, PDF preview, PDF text, and search term snippets (when applicable) are also displayed for viewing.
Export selected PDF documents with their category, tax year, notes, and flag state from the database for easy importing.
Contact Form
Please use this form to send a message regarding PDFKeeper to the Project Owner. For reporting bugs and requesting new features and enhancements, please visit the Issues tracker on GitHub. To ask questions about PDFKeeper and to get help, please visit the Discussions forum on GitHub.