New PDF Files Unsearchable

Question

Level 1

7 points

New PDF Files Unsearchable

I'm sorry if this is an often repeated question, but I used to be able to use Spotlight to go right to the entry I am searching for in Preview. Now when I add updated directories, Spotlight no longer reveals my search entry in these documents. I can not even use the Preview search function. Is there an indexing process that is no longer running?

Thanks for any help!
Mark

Powerbook G4 17" 1.67GHz 2GB DL Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jun 15, 2006 5:36 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,314 points

Jun 15, 2006 5:49 AM in response to MarkN

PDF searchability is an uneven thing. Where I work, another office scans in PDFs, and sometimes they don't do the scan correctly to make even the indexing work to search the content of every PDF in a folder in Windows. Are you able to open the same PDF in Acrobat Reader and search it?

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Answer 2

MarkN Author

Level 1

7 points

Jun 15, 2006 7:29 AM in response to a brody

The files I am getting are created on another machine and instead of printing them to a printer, they are printed to a CutePDF file. I have never had any problems in the past with them, so I was wondering why my search capability is disappearing now. I really loved this feature with Spotlight.

I don't have Acrobate Reader on my system... I never thought I needed it with Preview. I don't like installing software I don't think I need or duplicates something else. I guess maybe I should consider Acrobat.

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

85,314 points

Jun 15, 2006 7:55 AM in response to MarkN

At least it will tell you if the PDF is definitely not searchable or not. If it isn't searchable with Acrobat, something is wrong with the CutePDF file creation.

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Answer 4

Jun 16, 2006 7:29 PM in response to MarkN

Is the text in those documents selectable using Preview? If not, it may be that they are recorded as graphics rather than searchable text.

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Answer 5

Aug 7, 2006 4:16 AM in response to Mike-N-nahyunil

I think that's exactly the issue, Mike. My scanner software only allows me to scan in as various image filetypes or as a .pdf, but the resulting file (even if it's a .pdf) is unsearchable by Spotlight (or Adobe Reader for that matter).

What is the solution? I'm using an Epson Perfection 1660 Photo scanner. Do I need to get third-party software that will enable me to scan the document as text? And if so, where do I get it? Thanks!

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Answer 6

Ewen

Level 6

11,805 points

Aug 13, 2006 4:41 AM in response to ThinkTank

I think that's exactly the issue, Mike. My scanner
software only allows me to scan in as various image
filetypes or as a .pdf, but the resulting file (even
if it's a .pdf) is unsearchable by Spotlight (or
Adobe Reader for that matter).
What is the solution? I'm using an Epson Perfection
1660 Photo scanner. Do I need to get third-party
software that will enable me to scan the document as
text? And if so, where do I get it? Thanks!

As I understand it OSX Spotlight can search/ index text encoded within a PDF, but not graphics. As a result you can only search the file name of PDFs that just contain graphics. One way to go might be to utilize Optical character recognition (OCR), which is a feature associated with some scanners and their software. This will identify text in the scanned image, and can be used to produce a PDF with text and graphics, one that is searchable by Spotlight.

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Answer 7

Aug 14, 2006 6:09 AM in response to MarkN

"A PDF can only be searchable if it has either been created from an existing electronic document (Word, Excel, etc) containing text, or if a scanned document has been processed by optical character recognition (OCR), sometimes called 'captured' because of the names of components and products from Adobe."

This is not a Spotlight issue!

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