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
This works (sometimes)
Spotlight search:
Select: Show all in Finder…
On opening the document, the search word is retained by the Preview.app (but not every time):
Or, just search directly from a Finder window.
It's funny because I have a fairly clear memory that it used to be possible to press a modifier key or two, after obtaining a spotlight search result, and the search preview would reveal the paraphraph within the document that contained the words which you were searching for.
I'm on Sierra 10.2.1 and Preview
Yes, I searched for the word : AudioUnit, in Spotlight.
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.
nb. Check System Preferences > Spotlight > Search Results & make sure the PDF Documents box is checked.
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' 🙂
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.
doesn't work for me at all unfortunately. I have to use command + F after opening the document.
Weird, it used to, but It doesn't work (anymore) for me either.
Nb. I am using now using osSierra Version 10.12.4, with Preview Version 9.0 (909.17)
oh that's pretty cool, thank you for that.
I wonder if that is what I half-remembered having seen & used in the past.
Can you use spotlight search to find which page a word is on in a document?
