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January 25, 2017
Question

Making certain words unsearchable

  • January 25, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 1262 views

Is it possible to format words in a XML file to keep from being searchable in a PDF?  Or is there an option in Adobe for this?

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

Lovekesh Garg
Adobe Employee
Adobe Employee
January 30, 2017

There is 1 one option in Adobe Acrobat, that can help you here.

- Open scanned document in Acrobat

- Go to Enhance scan> Recognize Text> In this file> Settings(select 'Searchable Image Exact') option and correct language to run OCR. It will recognize whole text it can

- Now go to Enhance scan> Recognize Text> Correct recognize text> and select check box 'Review recognize Text'

- Here you can correct the incorrectly recognized words as well as modify or delete correct recognized words.

- Double click on any word you don't want to search and delete the word from 'recognized as' option in the tertiary menu bar above.

Now if you try to search this word. This instance is no more available.

If you don't have Acrobat installed, you can use trial version of latest Acrobat : Download Adobe Acrobat free trial | Acrobat Pro DC

Hope it will solve your problem. Please feel free to ask anything you want.

Thanks.

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 26, 2017

There isn't really a way of doing that. The method described above will make the entire file non-searchable, which is not what you asked for, if I understand you correctly.

The only method I can think of is to replace those words with an image that contains the same text. It might be possible to achieve that with a custom-made script.

January 26, 2017

OK, I didn't think there would be an easy way of doing it, but had to know for sure.

Yea, I wanted the entire document to be searchable (via CTL+F), but only wanted certain instances of words to be viewed.  For example, the word Angeline, if there are 6 instances of the word, I only want five of the instances to show.  For the 6th instance, I was hoping there would be a setting I could change in either the XML file or Adobe that would keep it from appearing in the search function.

I will do some research on the custom-made script (as I am not too well versed in Adobe).  I know enough to get me in trouble.  lol!!!  Thanks for your reply!

try67
Community Expert
Community Expert
January 26, 2017

Well, if you're interested in hiring someone to do it for you, feel free to contact me privately at try6767 at gmail.com.

Inspiring
January 25, 2017

Only if you converted them to images and then could be undone using OCR.

January 26, 2017

Thank you for your reply!

I have tested this by scanning the documents, converting them to text, but I do not see an option to make certain words unsearchable ..without just deleting the words in question.  I still want the words to be visible, but not (all instances of the word) to be found by doing a CTL+F.  I apologize if I was not clear in my first post. I hope this makes sense.