aftertherough
Level 1 (0 points)

Q: Can you use spotlight search to find which page a word is on in a document?

I use PDFs a lot, and I'm often looking for a specific word in the document. Is there a way to use spotlight search, or the finder, to open to a page where a specific word is inside that PDF or document (without opening the PDF and using CMD + F)?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), 2014 Model

Posted on Feb 9, 2016 11:50 AM

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aftertherough

Q: Can you use spotlight search to find which page a word is on in a document?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by balsa2,Helpful

    balsa2 balsa2 Feb 9, 2016 12:40 PM in response to aftertherough
    Level 3 (533 points)
    Desktops
    Feb 9, 2016 12:40 PM in response to aftertherough

    Yes, I searched for the word : AudioUnit, in Spotlight.

    Screen Shot.png

    Hit the Return, the PDF opened in Preview :

    Hit the Return key again & I was taken to the page, with the word I was looking for.

    Screen Shot 1.png

    nb. Check System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results & make sure the PDF Documents box is checked.

  • by Drew Reece,

    Drew Reece Drew Reece Feb 9, 2016 12:27 PM in response to aftertherough
    Level 5 (7,808 points)
    Notebooks
    Feb 9, 2016 12:27 PM in response to aftertherough

    Can you confirm that search works inside the relevant PDF?

     

    Some PDF's may be flattened into images, which means the text is not searchable. If search fails in Preview it will not work in Spotlight.

    If it only fails in Spotlight you may consider rebuilding the Spotlight index…

    Spotlight: How to re-index folders or volumes - Apple Support

     

    As balsa2 describes 'it should work'

  • by aftertherough,

    aftertherough aftertherough Feb 9, 2016 12:43 PM in response to Drew Reece
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 9, 2016 12:43 PM in response to Drew Reece

    Thanks!

     

    It did work. I realized I use Adobe Acrobat Reader as my default PDF reader. This prevented me from being able to open the PDFs to a specific page, because I wasn't using preview. I changed the default app to Preview for that specific PDF, and the method that balsa2 described worked.

     

    Yes the text is searchable via CMD + F in preview.