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MathPoli
MathPoli
Participating Frequently
June 10, 2016
Question

Can spotlight find the text contents of filled out form fields in PDFs?

  • June 10, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 657 views

We have several customer service PDFs with fillable form fields, so that the customers can type their data directly into the PDF, save the PDF and send the PDF to us.

It would be nice, if the operating system-wide search function (e.g. Mac OS: Spotlight search) could deliver search results from out of the PDF's text fields.

– Is this (technically) possible?

– If so, how do I set up the PDF so that the internal operating systems' search function of Mac OS or Windows can find the text contents?

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

try67
Community Expert
try67Community Expert
Community Expert
June 10, 2016

It's certainly possible technically, but this is something you'll need to ask of the makers of the OS (Apple or Microsoft) as they are the developers of the search function, not Adobe.

MathPoli
MathPoliAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 10, 2016

Thanks, I already suspected that the OS would be the one to blame! ;-)

I just thought, that since Acrobat Pro offers the opportunity e.g. to define what security settings (properties) a PDF can possess, a setting could be available for each PDF, which defines whether the text contents of the text fields are allowed to be read out or not.

My tests so far (Mac OS) indicate, that the Spotlight search does not read out the text fields.

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