Can't find text in PDF files with Win Search

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I’ve been unable to find text in pdf files when I use Windows Desktop Search even though this file type is checked in Indexing Options. I know the folder containing the pdf files has been indexed because I have no trouble finding text in Word documents that are in the same folder. I downloaded Adobe IFilter v6.0, but it appears this software didn’t install (compatibility issues??). Any suggestions?

Peter

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I have successfully found words in .pdf files. If I open a file using Adobe Reader, I can type any word I wish to search for in the search box at the top of the window, click enter and search to my hearts content. No this is not using Windows Desktop Search, but I’m not familiar with how this would work to search for a particular word in a file.

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Thanks for your reply, Ted. However, your solution only works if you know which file contains the text you’re looking for. Desktop Search theoretically works if you don’t know where the file is. It certainly works for text files, Word files, Excel files, etc. I think Search is supposed to work for pdf files, too, but it hasn’t worked for me.

Peter

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I have a program called X1 Pro Client (paid) which will find pdf files containing a particular search term -the pdf files can be stored anywhere on my hard drives. Teh search term isn’t highlighted, but I then use the search function within PDF-XChange Viewer (free) to find the exact spot where the word occurs.
I use X1 as a replacement for Windows Search and it is an excellent program. X1 website
Dianne

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I use FoxIt PDF Reader (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/). It has a search function that searches through all of the PDFs in a directory.

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I’ve been unable to find text in pdf files.
Any suggestions?

If the PDF was created from an IMAGE then although it may look like text it is stored as a graphic. Unless you first put it through OCR you can’t expect a search to be able to index it.

stuck

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If the PDF was created from an IMAGE then although it may look like text it is stored as a graphic. Unless you first put it through OCR you can’t expect a search to be able to index it.

stuck

If I can add to Stuck’s comments. We went paperless (well sort of) a couple years ago and most of our documents are in pdf format. We have found that if we do not put a document through the ocr process, when scanned or converted to pdf, it saves a lot of time and space as it is a much smaller file. Anyway, my point is that a lot of pdf documents may not be readable, and therefore as Stuck indicated, search will not read them. You can test the document in question by opening it, then searching for a word using your pdf readers find function. If it cannot find words, then neither will Microsoft’s search.

Dave

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Hi

this might be a completely wrong direction, as I things may have changed since I first installed desktop search, but I found (using Windows 7 search) an old email from Woody’s OFFICE Watch from 17/12/2004! which stated “3. INSTALLATION Before installing MSN Toolbar Suite you should install the Adobe PDF iFilter. This will let you search the contents of PDF files. Download IFilter free from
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=2611”

I don’t know if the solution still works but I offer it as a 6 year old solution to the version then available.

Cheers

John

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If you are running a 64 bit operating system you should install the Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms. See http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025

Adobe currently bundles a 32-bit PDF iFilter with Adobe Acrobat® 9 as well as free Adobe Reader® 9 software.

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Foxit also has a free desktop ifilter for 32-bit & 64-bit Windows. See Foxit Software – Foxit PDF IFilter 2.0[/url] for details.

Joe

--Joe

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Just out of curiosity, I tried to find a word (firewall) in all PDF files using Copernic Desktop Search (Professional). It displayed the titles that contained the word, but not instances of the word within files, although I admit that I didn’t give it much time or try anything fancy. I have no trouble finding things within Acrobat, but I have the full version on this machine, not just the reader.

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Just out of curiosity, I tried to find a word (firewall) in all PDF files using Copernic Desktop Search (Professional). It displayed the titles that contained the word, but not instances of the word within files, although I admit that I didn’t give it much time or try anything fancy. I have no trouble finding things within Acrobat, but I have the full version on this machine, not just the reader.

You have to have an ifilter installed to have a search product be able to access content. You have to verify the Copernic will use an ifiliter if one is available.

Joe

--Joe

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In response to peterg (post#11), I also have Copenic Desktop Search (pro) and Acrobat (Standard). Typing a search term into Copernic shows both Word and PDF files, and clicking a PDF shows the search term highlighted in Copernic’s file preview. Win7’s search gave the same list, plus an .mht file, but of course no preview.

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To the original questioner: Have you tried Control Panel > Indexing Options > Advanced > File Types > pdf? Click pdf and see if it says ‘Index Properties Only’ or ‘Index Properties and FIle Contents’. I have both options available, and the second is selected (not by me, I’ve never been into that box before).

To JoeP: I have used Copernic Desktop Search for several years, including before I went to the full Acrobat and was just using Reader. I think that Copernic has its own PDF interpreter as I never installed a PDF ifilter.

I am using Win7 Pro, although I doubt that this is relevant.

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Thanks to all have responded.

> I’m using the 32-bit version of Windows 7.

> The pdf files I’ve been using for testing are not images. I can select the text.

> When I look at Indexing Options > Advanced > File Types, the filter description says “PDF filter”.

I’m using Acrobat version 8. Should I install Reader version 9 to make sure I have the current version of IFilter?

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Thanks to all have responded.

I’m using Acrobat version 8. Should I install Reader version 9 to make sure I have the current version of IFilter?

If you just google ifilter you will find that different versions are available. For the current Acrobat 9 there are two: one for 64-bit, the other for 32-bit. I think you will find that the right filter is available for your version of Acrobat as well.

I am delighted to report that adding the ifilter to my setup allows me to search PDF documents globally, using Copernic Desktop Search, for contents (again using the word ‘firewall’). While I happen to have Acrobat 9 Pro and Copernic Desktop Pro (64-bit Win 7), I have no reason to believe that the freeware versions would behave differently (I’ll find out later tonight).

Above all, many thanks to Joe, without whose help many of us would still be in the dark.

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“> When I look at Indexing Options > Advanced > File Types, the filter description says “PDF filter”.”

There are two radio buttons below the list. You should see the “… and File Contents” one ON when you click on the pdf line in the list.

Good luck with your investigations.

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There are two radio buttons below the list. You should see the “… and File Contents” one ON when you click on the pdf line in the list.

Yes, I see the radio buttons, and “Index Properties and File Contents” is selected. However, both options are grayed out and unselectable. The file description text (i.e., PDF Filter) is also gray instead of black.

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I have no idea if this is the problem, but Adobe changes their file format every version or two. Lotus Notes/Domino uses a third party search app that can search not only Notes documents/records for any text string but also any files attached to Notes records. At some point (I think it was Notes/Domino 6.something) IBM gave up guaranteeing that the search would properly index PDF files; each version of Acrobat produces a different formatted pdf file and the search engine had to be updated for each version. I find that pdf files are still searchable within Notes/domino but never know for sure if I’m getting all the hits I should.

If the indexer/search engine for MS has similar problems, it could be related to the version of pdf files on your system. Try looking at the file version and see if the hits and misses fall into any clear groupings.

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On the general issue of pdf searching:
I’ve been researching this issue (searching-across-multiple-pdf-documents) for over a year now. This is a pretty well documented issue, though I have yet to see a fully reliable solution. I haven’t tested these for Windows 7, but I’m pretty sure everything discussed here will be compatible.

Alternate threads worth reading at Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/word-and-phrase-search-pdf-files.htm
http://www.techsupportalert.com/freeware-forum/i-want-freeware-program-that/1724-searches-within-all-pdf-files-in-folder.html

I’ve tried almost every pdf search application I could lay my hands on. Important to me were search times and resource load/burden. Currently, the favoured applications for pdf txt searching seem to be Adobe Reader 9 and PdfXChange. I prefer Adobe Reader 9 myself. It’s fairly light and one of the fastest out there. PdfXChange is just as good, though. I’m confident that either of these programs can beat out Windows 7’s built-in search function hands down.

Was not impressed with: Copernic, Search Inform, Grep, Hound, and many others.

Ideally, I would love to have a pdf indexing program for near instant searches, but as of yet, I have not been able to find a reliable one. I’ve tried Copernic, Adobe Pro, etc. Nothing works for me. If someone out there has a solid solution, I’m all ears. I’ve contacted X1 Pro’s sales team (waiting to hear back) and am about to give Exalead a shot momentarily.

Hope this info is helpful to some of you.

— Kudos —

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To search PDF files, all you need to do is bring up the :Adobe Reader, click on the “field glasses” which of course opens ujp Search, and then indicate that you want to search a specified drive, and you will find whatever you want. Why bother with anything else?

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To search PDF files, all you need to do is bring up the :Adobe Reader, click on the “field glasses” which of course opens ujp Search, and then indicate that you want to search a specified drive, and you will find whatever you want. Why bother with anything else?

Elikam: Snarky answer, but I’ll clarify nonetheless. When searching a vast directory of 1000+ pdf documents for the right ones (e.g., for research), it is incredibly time-inefficient to complete a full search of each file in the directory. In my opinion, desktop computing is not at the point where a full, straight-up search can yield fast enough results. Indexing is an effective workaround… well, effective if you can get something that doesn’t crash, doesn’t create too large an in index database, and actually finds all the documents for which you are looking.

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Thanks to all who replied. I guess I was hoping for a one-stop solution in case I couldn’t remember whether the information I was looking for was in a pdf, doc, txt, etc. file. Shouldn’t the Adobe PDF IFilter or similar product work in Desktop Search? When I tried installing Adobe IFilter 6.0 I got a message that it wasn’t compatible with Windows 7.

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When I tried installing Adobe IFilter 6.0 I got a message that it wasn’t compatible with Windows 7.

You need the latest Adobe ifilters.

Adobe bundles a 32-bit ifilter with the latest releases of Adobe Reader. If you need a 64-bit Adobe ifilter see Adobe – Acrobat : For Windows : Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms.

Foxit also has ifilters available. See Foxit Software – Foxit PDF IFilter 2.0[/url].

Joe

--Joe

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Thanks to all who replied. I guess I was hoping for a one-stop solution in case I couldn’t remember whether the information I was looking for was in a pdf, doc, txt, etc. file. Shouldn’t the Adobe PDF IFilter or similar product work in Desktop Search? When I tried installing Adobe IFilter 6.0 I got a message that it wasn’t compatible with Windows 7.

Just came across Agent Ransack (reviewed at Gizmo’s Freeware). It searches for everything including pdf/doc/etc. file contents. I’ve tried out the freeware version briefly. It seems apropos, small (light footprint), quick, and excellent all-round. Even accepts Regular Expressions. Look it up at http://www.mythicsoft.com. Hope this serves well as your one-stop solution.

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I apologize if I have missed it, but in all of those posts I am still not clear on whether you have Adobe Acrobat but not the latest, or Adobe Reader. We do know that you have Windows 7. Whether or not you have Acrobat, you can still get the latest Reader, which is version 9, I think about 9.3 at present, and which is totally free of charge. And it is for that free version of Reader that all of the posts are coming in to suggest that you get the relevant ifilter. It’s free. Just pick the 32-bit or 64-bit ifilter and install it on top of the latest Adobe Reader without paying a penny. (I hope I don’t sound grouchy, but if I do it’s not directed at you.)

Ransack does indeed sound interesting, and I look forward to giving it a try and hearing reports from others (including you, we trust).

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I apologize if I have missed it, but in all of those posts I am still not clear on whether you have Adobe Acrobat but not the latest, or Adobe Reader. We do know that you have Windows 7. Whether or not you have Acrobat, you can still get the latest Reader, which is version 9.

Peter,
Thanks very much for your comments. As I stated in one of my replies, I have Acrobat 8. I don’t have Reader installed. In fact, I’ve read that installing Acrobat and Reader of different version levels is a bad idea.

Peter

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As I stated in one of my replies, I have Acrobat 8.

Peter,

You’re right, I did miss it, and after googling the subject in the hope of offering you a link I can only say that it’s no wonder confusion reigns. I’ll be interested to see what the outcome is, but in the meantime I’m just happy I got my current version to work. So what was the big announcement this week? Why Adobe CS5, of course, presumably with a new version of Acrobat.

Best of luck,

Peter

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Hi, I use Foxit Reader, and Copernic desktop search = free version – , and it displays pdf files containing my search criteria, AND highligts the words in the text.

Foxit can select text, but it only works if the owner of the pdf did not lock the option.

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I’ve finally figured it all out. Yesterday I installed the free Foxit PDF IFilter 1.0.3213 (32 bit) from http://www.foxitsoftware.com/downloads/index.php. After indexing was complete I was able to search for text within PDF files using Windows Desktop Search. Today, as a test, I uninstalled the Foxit IFilter and installed Adobe PDF IFilter 6.0. Once indexing was complete, Search was unable to find the same document. I then uninstalled the Adobe IFilter and reinstalled the Foxit IFilter and confirmed that once again I could search successfully after the index was rebuilt. I don’t know why the Adobe IFilter doesn’t work. Perhaps it’s not compatible with Windows 7. I’ll stick with Foxit’s version.

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Adobe PDF IFilter 6.0. Once indexing was complete, Search was unable to find the same document. I then uninstalled the Adobe IFilter and reinstalled the Foxit IFilter and confirmed that once again I could search successfully after the index was rebuilt.

Oops. Are we searching for a document or for contents of documents? My searches will search within multiple documents (e.g. the word ‘firewall’). And perhaps you had better double-check the version of the Adobe ifilter you have installed. The advice has been that you must have the latest version (as well as the correct 64-bit or 32-bit). Version 6 is ancient history.

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Oops. Are we searching for a document or for contents of documents? My searches will search within multiple documents (e.g. the word ‘firewall’). And perhaps you had better double-check the version of the Adobe ifilter you have installed. The advice has been that you must have the latest version (as well as the correct 64-bit or 32-bit). Version 6 is ancient history.

=> Searching for contents. By “find the same document” I meant that when I searched for text within documents, Search could not find the pdf file containing the text I was searching for with the Adobe IFilter 6.0 installed.

=> I suspected that version 6 of the Adobe IFilter might not be current. (On the web page for the download of this product there’s no indication of the date.) I could not find a later version in my search of the Adobe web site. While I’ve been told that the latest version of Adobe Reader includes the latest version of the IFilter, I was unwilling to install it because I’ve read that mixing Acrobat 8 and Reader 9 is not a good idea.

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