How to Enable Search on PDF
Enable search on PDF file contains text but it is not searchable until you apply the OCR function. Fortunately, there are online services like Convertor that can help you make your scanned documents searchable and selectable.
Displays the search results in a separate window. Allows you to sort the list of results by relevance ranking, document title, and more.
Enabling search functionality in a PDF document allows users to search for specific words or phrases within the document, making it easier to find information. Most PDF viewers and editors come with built-in search features. Here are general instructions on how to enable search in PDF documents using popular PDF software:
Adobe Acrobat Reader:
- Open the PDF Document:
- Launch Adobe Acrobat Reader.
- Open the PDF document you want to enable search in.
- Use the Search Bar:
- Look for the search bar at the top-right corner of the Acrobat Reader window.
- Type the word or phrase you want to search for and press Enter.
Google Chrome:
- Open the PDF in Chrome:
- Drag the PDF file into a Google Chrome browser tab, or right-click the PDF file and select “Open with” > “Google Chrome.”
- Use the Search Box:
- In Chrome, you should see a search box in the top-right corner.
- Enter the text you want to search for, and Chrome will highlight the matches in the document.
Microsoft Edge:
- Open the PDF in Edge:
- Open the PDF file using Microsoft Edge.
- Search for Text:
- Click on the magnifying glass icon in the top-left corner.
- Enter the text you want to search for, and Edge will highlight the matches.
Foxit Reader:
- Open the PDF in Foxit Reader:
- Launch Foxit Reader.
- Open the PDF document.
- Use the Search Bar:
- Look for the search bar in the top-right corner.
- Enter the text you want to search for, and press Enter.
Sumatra PDF:
- Open the PDF in Sumatra PDF:
- Launch Sumatra PDF.
- Open the PDF document.
- Use the Search Function:
- Look for the search icon or press “Ctrl + F” to bring up the search box.
- Enter the text you want to search for.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
OCR turns text-based PDFs into fully searchable PDF documents. It scans a paper document or image-based PDF and adds a layer of real text to the top of it, making it fully searchable by any text-based tool such as Adobe Reader.
The OCR settings in the Convert Pages dialog box control how OCR runs. If you choose to OCR all pages, any existing text layer content is replaced by the OCR results. Choose to skip images or not to process images containing text (OCR only works on PDF documents that contain true text, such as typewritten pages and printed reports).
The Search Options dialog box provides many advanced search options. The “Downsample To” pull down menu allows you to specify a resolution that reduces the number of pixels in color, grayscale, or monochrome images after OCR is complete. If you search a PDF document, the instance of your search term is highlighted in the Search Results panel.
Keywords
While the ability to search PDF documents is a wonderful feature, it is not recommended to add too many keywords to your document. This is because this could negatively affect your rankings in search results. Generally, best practices are to use words that people commonly type into online searches and are familiar with. Google
Using software like UltraFinder can help you make your PDFs more searchable. This program can scan your document and recognize all the text in it. It can also search for specific words or phrases in the document and highlight them. This can help you quickly locate important information in your document.
Another program to use for PDF keyword searching is Wondershare PDFelement – PDF Editor. It is a powerful tool that can transform how you work with PDFs. Its advanced search feature gives you various search preferences, including case sensitive, whole words only, and including comments and attachments. It can also search multiple PDFs in a folder or all open files.
Text Formatting
The search results list shows the instances of text that appear in the searched PDF. They are listed in page order, grouped by the names of each document. You select a result to open the document and highlight its instance of text. You can also save the search results as a list of words or as a CSV file.
Select a default font and font size for new text added to your PDF document, but this selection doesn’t affect existing text. Select Edit in the Edit PDF toolbar, and then click Text in the dialog box.
You can move a formatted text object by hovering the cursor over the border until it becomes a resizing cursor, which is two lines with two arrows. You can also align the object by clicking on one of its corner handles or using the alignment commands in the menu or toolbar. Also edit a text object by selecting it with the Text tool, and then editing the text contents in the text editor.
Indexing
To improve the performance of searching large PDF files, you can create a full text index. An index contains a list of search terms that are linked to the locations of instances of those terms in each document. When Acrobat searches cataloged PDFs, it uses the index to find the documents instead of re-searching each document.
An index can include an expanded version of the document that has additional information such as bookmarks, form fields, comments, digital signature, attachments, and other custom document properties. To include this additional information, select Add To Index and then choose a type from the Indexing Options dialog box.
If the index you create includes single words, you can enable stemming to find variations of the word. For example, a search for diazinon and kaolin finds both words. You can also search using only the exact word or phrase, or a word or phrase in quotation marks. In addition, you can set a preference to have more search options appear in the Search window when you are searching a PDF or an index created with Acrobat.
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