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Find Not Working in Preview

I couldn't find a "Preview" area, so I'll try this here. I don't know why, but most times I am using Preview to view a PDF document, such as a software manual, the Find function doesn't work correctly. I type in a single word that has numerous visable recurrences, but Preview can't find them. Sometimes, it partially works. I have a MainStage manual I downloaded that only finds instances of the word in the figures of the document, but not in the main text. I keep looking for some selection or preference that is set up wrong, but I have no idea why it works this way. I've had other search problems working with PDF documents on Windows platforms, so maybe it's all related to PDF, and not to Preview. But without a search function, I'd just as well have a paper copy! Any ideas? THANKS!

MacBook Pro 2.16GHz, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Oct 5, 2011 5:18 AM

Best reply

ToolsandKeys__ Author

Level 1

40 points

Posted on Oct 5, 2011 8:00 PM

Well, you are correct, many PDFs are scanned documents that are not searchable. But the problem I've been having is with the text-based PDFs. I can highlight each individual word or character, which would not be possible in a scanned document. But your reply started me thinking, and I ran a test. When I copy and paste a word from the section of the PDF that is not searchable, I get the following illegible characters: ␣␣␣␣␣␣␣ . When I copy and paste from the section that is searchable, I get the original word correctly copied.

So I went back to the original website and downloaded the manual. Doing nothing more, that document was actually searchable, and correctly supported copy and paste. Selecting Save As, I saved the document to my desktop (the original was in the Downloads folder), and lo and behold, that version of the document was no longer searchable. So something is going on with the Save As command. When I threw out the non-searchable version, and went back to the Downloads copy and simply moved it to the desktop, that version was still searchable.

So I can't say I fully understand it, but I've learned that I don't want to do Save As after downloading a PDF manual - something in the saving puts the main portion of the document (but not the text in the figures) into a corrupted format that makes it unsearchable.

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17 replies

AxelPale

Level 1

9 points

May 5, 2016 2:43 AM in response to ToolsandKeys__

I fixed the issue with the following trick. This seems to has to do with annotations. If there is any annotations, the search does not work.

- Open your non-searchable PDF in Preview

- Select all by cmd+a

- Press backspace (it removes all the selected annotations)

- Save by cmd+s

Now the search works as expected. (OS X 10.11.4, MacBook Air mid-2012)

TINGXU

Level 1

8 points

Oct 8, 2017 4:29 PM in response to ToolsandKeys__

Mine doesn't work in certain profiles now. It worked perfect before. so ANNOYING. It seems the 10.0 version is not compatiable with the high sierra. What should I do? Thanks.

Find Not Working in Preview