Pdf Search

I am unable to search within some of my pdfs. They are scanned and I downloaded them from a website. Any advice?

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Participating Frequently

If the PDF content is only the output image of the scanner then there is no "text" for any search engine to find anything.

Perhaps the PDF needs to be processed through optical character recognition (OCR)?

Scanner output images of the hardcopy text can be OCR'd using Adobe Acrobat (Pro or Standard) - but not Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Both Acrobat's and Reader's included search engine can "find" / "search" OCR output.

Adobe Employee

It might be possible there is no such text in the PDF you are searching for. Or text is copied as artifacts(vectors).

Can you please share a sample PDF, so we can identify what exactly the issue is?

You can use https://cloud.acrobat.com/send to share your file.

Thanks.

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