In the past, it has not been possible to perform searches within documents stored in a proprietary, binary format, such as Microsoft Word documents and Adobe Acrobat documents. The present invention solves the problem by storing the binary file as a field in a record of the database. Then, the binary file is translated into a text format, which is searchable within the database. Thereafter, a user of the database is able to search within binary files by performing a search of the translated file.