Using Spotlight to find PDF content

Question

Level 1

5 points

Using Spotlight to find PDF content

I am hoping to cut back on my paper clutter by scanning my documents using a Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M and creating searchable PDF files. Here's my problem - once I've scanned the document and performed the OCR on it, I can't seem to be able to get any of the content of the PDF file to show up in a Spotlight search.

I can scan within the PDF document if it's open in Preview or Acrobat or Yep, but I can't get Spotlight to search the content of the file.

Any thoughts or tips?

PowerMac G5 and MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Jan 28, 2008 12:13 PM

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Answer 1

Honolulu

Level 3

950 points

Jan 28, 2008 12:58 PM in response to Nami

Nami,

Have you gone to system preferences/spotlight and checked the PDF documents block.

Also, it seems that you can designate a specific folder for your scanner to store scanned documents?

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Answer 2

Nami Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 28, 2008 2:05 PM in response to Honolulu

Thanks, but yes, I have PDF docs checked in my Spotlight preferences. I also have the documents scanned directly into a single folder, but Spotlight still won't find anything unless the word is in the doc title. I can use Yep to tag them, but was hoping to avoid tagging every single scan.

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Answer 3

Honolulu

Level 3

950 points

Jan 28, 2008 4:14 PM in response to Nami

Kind of a question I have to ask. If you've scanned them in utilizing an OCR (I use Read Iris) do you save them as editable pdfs or do you save them as an rtf or doc file? If you've changed them from a pdf file obviously, they won't show up as pdfs.

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Answer 4

Nami Author

Level 1

5 points

Jan 28, 2008 4:52 PM in response to Honolulu

Valid question - I haven't changed them from PDF format. I scanned them in using the Abby Fine Reader OCR software that came with the ScanSnap S510M.

This was one of the main reasons I got this scanner - the ability to scan to a searchable PDF file. Maybe I misunderstood that I could only scan within the document when it was open, but I have some other PDF files that I received from other sources that show up when I search for a term that is part of that document's content - not it's title or tags.

This is such a bummer!

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Answer 5

baltwo

Level 9

62,386 points

Jan 28, 2008 10:25 PM in response to Nami

IIRC, your scanning and OCR software has to save them as PDF. You'll have to peruse the manual.

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Answer 6

Nami Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 28, 2008 8:12 AM in response to baltwo

It does save them as a PDF file.

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Answer 7

toodogs

Level 1

0 points

Mar 5, 2008 9:42 PM in response to Nami

Nami;

I have the same problem (but no solution yet). Here is what I have found:
1) Spotlight will not search the text contents of my searchable pdfs (scanned with a ScanSnap and OCR'd with Acrobat 8.0) even if I define the location, kind, and content using cmd-F.
2) The pdfs are "real" pdfs with searchable text since I can copy and paste the text from the pdf to a text file.
3) Adobe Acrobat 8.0 WILL search my pdfs --- that is, the program will search a folder and return pdfs with the specified search term. ~100 pdfs will take about 10 minnutes.
4) I can find pdfs that are converted html or Word documents.

I suspect that searchable pdfs, which are converted from an image, have the text tagged or stored differently than html and Word documents that are converted to pdfs. Any other ideas.

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Answer 8

Nami Author

Level 1

5 points

Mar 24, 2008 4:54 PM in response to toodogs

Any luck figuring this one out yet? I'm still stumped and it's really limiting the usefulness of having a super scanner like the Fujitsu Scansnap!

Thanks...

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Answer 9

Mar 24, 2008 6:13 PM in response to Nami

When you've scanned a file, try opening it in Preview and re-saving it. If that works you could set up a folder action to do this automatically, perhaps.

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