Lost Cause? Previewing Word Docs in Mac OSX 10.4

A call for suggestions about the following:

System: Mac OSX 10.4.11 PPC notebook

Have thousands of MS Word files in Mac Word X (2001) and no, I can't afford to update that or the OS.

Need to text-search file content and browse these in a quick preview mode, as is possible for other documents and image files with Finder and Spotlight.

Anyone have suggestions? I will be grateful for any help.

Please note:

- I'D MOST LOVE something like Copernic HD search for Mac, where you can do boolean search for text content in all files and get the results in search-engine display. But it doesn't seem to exist for Mac.

- Again, Spotlight doesn't search these Word files, only the filenames. They don't show in Preview or Finder. (Is there an app to add this capability for 10.4?)

- I installed Word Browser Plugin 3.0 from Schubert, which is supposed to enable easy Word for Mac document browsing in Safari (I have 4.0.5). But it doesn't work, keeps forcing a view of the same document no matter what is tried. Looks like a bug or else it's no longer compatible with 10.4 as claimed. Opera (10+) and Firefox do not recognize this plugin.

- Even older versions of MS-Word had a "File Manager" that allowed you to index and search and browse all files. Whatever happened to that, and can one find an MS-Office add-on that enables this for Word for Mac X?

- Web searches haven't helped.

Those who can help, thanks in advance for your patience and wisdom in this matter.