search in preview not working in macos mojave

BTW, in order to get search working again, you have to close the window (command + w) and reopen on the pdf. Closing Preview all together (command + q) and reopening the pdf doesn't work. This is indeed bizarre.

FWIW, what I found out by accident is, some PDFs have to be closed then re-opened in order for search to work. No idea why.

My late 2012 iMac has the same problem – can not search PDFs. Always says No Results Found, even when I can see the searched for word in the doc.

But my 2014 MacBook Air works perfectly.

iMac has a Fusion drive that was converted to APFS. Not sure if that has anything to do with the problem, but it is a big change.

I am having a similar problem, the update to Mojave has rendered Preview useless. It just loads and the image never appears. I also can't open PDF's anymore. There is some sort of conflict with Adobe Acrobat I can't seem to figure out.

On the released version of macOS Mojave 10.14, I can generate a new PDF from a Pages v7.2 document, and Preview will allow me to search for single, or quoted strings — with the expected highlighted results. This is true if the PDF were generated from MacTeX, or other PDF generation source.

I've been working with many PDFs this last week and I've found the same thing: 100% of the time, a PDF has to be opened that second time before it can be searched. But search has been 100% successful on that second opening. Quite an unusual bug.

This has been driving me crazy for the past 30min. I tried quitting Preview, restarting, & even clearing a few caches to no avail. However, closing (via ⌘W) reopening the PDF has worked for me thus far!

I have the same problem after updating a 2015 MBP to Mojave.

Bugs this problematic at such fundamental functions of built-in software are unacceptable, especially for a company that demands a premium for products that "just work".

FWIW, comm-W works (for now), but it's ridiculous to have to disrupt my workflow like that.

Thanks! I re-opened the PDF in order for search to work. But I also noticed that sometimes you have to go to the upper left corner which says "Sort by" then press -> "Table of Contents" in order to make the search function to work.

I found that changing one choice in preview preferences and quit (to force updating the preference file) made everything work again as expected when re-opening the file. After that, the choice in preferences can be reverted back.

Nothing's working for me ... but, if you read through this entire post, you'll find something new and interesting!

I'm using High Sierra 10.13.6. Preview version 10.0 (944.5). Files that I (probably) used to be able to search before are (no longer) searchable. I tried Cmd-W, closing and reopening Preview, change a Preference and restarting Preview, deleting ALL com.apple.preview.plist files. Nothing works.

I can search some files fine, but not others with Preview. Here's something further interesting ... the files I CAN search with Preview I can also search with Adobe Acrobat DC. The files that don't work in Preview don't work with Acrobat either! And the same is true of Safari and Google Chrome using File>Open File ...

AND, using Preview and Safari "Export as PDF ..." doesn't work either! Files still remain unsearchable.

However, I was able (with some errors) to use ABBYY's FineReader to "convert" an unsearchable PDF to a searchable PDF file.

A very very strange bug. There certainly appears to be something wrong with the unsearchable files.

I think I found out what it is ... apparently these unsearchable files are not in fact PDF files, but are IMAGES! I installed a free trial of Adobe's Acrobat Pro DC, which I do NOT want to pay for. But I opened an unsearchable file, and it said, "This page contains only an image. Would you like to run text recognition to make the text on this page accessible?" I converted the file to "Editable text and images". VOILA! The resulting file is searchable, even in Preview!

Now the mystery is ... "why and when did my previously searchable .PDF files become image files?"

Does anybody have an easier way to convert such files back into true PDFs?

I deliberately didn't upgrade to Mojave until it had been around for a while, assuming most bugs would've been fixed by then. I finally took the plunge with 10.14.3 and within 24 hours I found this problem.

Nice to know it's not just me, but I'm amazed it still hasn't been fixed. This is the kind of thing you'd expect from Micro-bloody-soft, not Apple.

I also had this problem with search in Preview under Mojave – and not being able to search a 700+ page reference book is a serious problem! Works in most PDFs but not some. I've tried every possible workaround listed here and none worked for me. (FWIW, there is no Table of Contents option for search in this version).

Here's what worked: In Preview export your document as PDF. It'll create a new PDF which, in my case, was immediately searchable. IMPORTANT: Don't trash your original PDF if there are links in it. Exporting as PDF broke all chapter and TOC links.

But at least I can search this 700 page document.

I tried this on several PDFs. Opened them – couldn't search. Closed and reopened them and search worked. Rather bizarre but at least it is funcional.

I thought it bizarre as well.