How to Search Across Every Meeting Transcript You Own (Not Just the Last One)

"Someone mentioned pricing in a call last month. Which call? Who said it?"

If your transcripts live as loose files from three different tools, that question takes twenty minutes. Here's how to make it take twenty seconds.

Why this is hard by default

• Each tool searches only inside itself. Fathom searches Fathom, Otter searches Otter.
• Since September 2026, a free Fathom account's cross-meeting search only covers about two weeks of your own calls. Your older meetings still exist — they're just outside the search window.
• Loose files have inconsistent names and formats, so folder search finds words but gives you no structure: no speaker, no date, no way to filter.

The DIY setup

1. Export everything into ONE folder (see the bulk export guide for a renaming system that makes this work: YYYY-MM-DD-title).
2. Convert everything to plain text if you can. Text is the one format every search tool on every computer can read, forever.
3. Use your computer's full-text search, or a free text search tool, and search the folder. You'll get hits. You'll then open each file and find the moment by hand, with no speaker or date filter. For a small library, under ~20 meetings, this is genuinely enough. Stop here and save your money.

When DIY stops being enough

Around the point where you're asking filter questions — "only what Priya said", "only in October", "only Fathom calls", "only meetings tagged with this client" — folder search runs out. You need the transcripts indexed: title, date, source, speakers and tags stored with the text, so search can filter before it matches words.

The tool method

Disclosure: I built MeetScribe.

Import once, from any mix of tools and formats (TXT, VTT, SRT, JSON):

python -m meetscribe import ~/all-my-transcripts
python -m meetscribe search "pricing" --speaker "Priya" --date-from 2026-10-01

It uses a local full-text index, detects duplicates on re-import so your library doesn't double, and everything stays in one file on your own machine. No account, no uploads. There's also a local web view if you'd rather browse than type commands.

And because the library is indexed anyway, the same command set gives you the commitments report across all meetings (python -m meetscribe actions) — the thing folder search can never give you.

Trial is your first 5 imports free, $29 one time after that: https://solopreneur87.gumroad.com/l/mrysy

The takeaway

Search isn't a feature of a fancy tool. It's a property of having everything in one place, in one format, with dates and speakers attached. However you build that — folder discipline or a tool — build it once, before your library is 500 meetings deep and the cleanup is a weekend.