Preview PDF Search

Hello Big-Jim-Slade,

When you open a PDF document in the Preview app and search for a word or exact phrase, what happens exactly? Does it show the results just not in the order you want to see them in? Are you sorting it by 'Search Rank' or 'Page Order'? This explains more: Find text in PDFs in Preview on Mac - Apple Support

Find text in PDFs in Preview on Mac

You can open a PDF or other document in Preview, then search for a word or any set of characters.

1. In the Preview app  on your Mac, open a PDF.

2. In the Preview toolbar, type a word or phrase in the search field (you may need to resize the window to see it).

To find an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks.

3. Do any of the following in the search results:

- Go to the next or previous search result: Click the Next  or Previous  button.

- Sort the search results by number of matches: Click Search Rank.

- Sort the search results by page number: Click Page Order.

4. When you’re finished, click the Delete button  in the search field.

If you switch to Page Order, does it show the results in the order you'd expect? Does this occur with multiple PDF documents? That will tell us more about what's going on.

Let us know how it goes, take care.