Adobe DC Pro search engine runs extremely slow

[youngjedi]

Hello,

I have a user who is using the search engine to look for items in a PDF file. This file contains a large amount of pages but the size of the pdf file is not too very large considering the amount of pages. 

Since moving from Acrobat 2017 to Acrobat DC the search function on this one and only many paged document has been extemely slow. Since each page does not contain much data on it, it still runs very slow to get through the pages. We are seeing a rate of about 3 pages every two to three seconds with Acrobat Pro DC. It would do about 20 to 25 pages prior to that with Acrobat 2017. Eventually it would hit around 500 pages and then it would stall.

I have updated to the very latest 2023.001.20064. I have ran a repair. I checked the resources being used and we are at 33% memory total and about 14% of the CPU usage total.

Enabled Fast find was already turned on (turned it off and restarted Acrobat and then turned it back on and restarted Acrobat) and Purged Cache Size. 

Moved the file locally and tried it from there and it did not help.

Showing inline storage when opening files is turned off and I turned off the Utilize Cloud Search Engine when searching. Eventually I upped the Maximum number of documents returned in results to be over 500 since there over 500 pages. This seemed to allow it to go over 500 pages. I renamed the Acrobat DC folders under both the Local and the Roaming files in order to reset the settings and to get a clean DC profile created. This started to allow the search to happen about 10 documents in about 2 to 3 seconds, but that lasted only through 80 pages and it slowed down again. I did the same thing and rebooted and now Acrobat Pro took longer to open and the search engine took longer to open also. Setting the settings back did not fix this new delema. I have 2 other users with DC set up exactly the same without this issue. One of them it had worked with no issues, the second one my coworker had reimaged the laptop. We verified it was not a profile issue since tried the local copy with my account in which I have never been logged into this computer myself previously. I do not want to reimage this user's laptop since he would have to travel almost 2 hours in one direction to get into the office and that it is very intrusive with the downtime that he currently cannot afford. 

I also have tried to index to the file. It looked like it was going to work but it stalled at 20% done. It took one minute to get to that point and we let it sit for about 20 minutes after that and it never proceded beyond the 20%. Cancelled out of that and it took at least 20 minutes to back out of it.

I am at a loss. I know that it is not the file since the other two users do not have problems with the exact same file over a slower VPN connection than this user. This is time sensitive since it has to do with people's W2 forms and and there three users have other things to deal with with tax deadlines.

Any recommendations would help.

Thank you,

John

[MeenakshiNegi]

Hi youngjedi,

Thank you for reaching out.

As mentioned above, the issue occurs only in a particular machine.

Did you try creating a new user account on that machine and replicating this behavior? If not, I would suggest getting this checked. 

Also, ask the user to share the screenshot of the task manager window. If possible, share the screen recording of the process so we can check the delay time. 

When you say many pages of documents, please confirm the minimum size and pages of the file when the issue occurs. 

Share the OS version on the machine. We may also need Process logs (https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/Labs/acromonitor.html) from the device.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

[youngjedi]

Hello Meenaski,

I did an uninstall and reinstall. In between I removed the Acrobat folders from Local, Local Low, and Roaming. 

I tried with my account on the computer. It ran fine. We switched to the user's account and it ran fine.

After that, we tried running it on the original file and the search bogged down. I went back to the local file and it was now bogged down. I switched to my account with running it local and the search was bogged down on my account on this second attempt.

The software does not get the unresponsive message.

The size of the PDF is 7.37 MB.  It has 5934 pages.

I looked in the task manager and there was nothing out of the ordinary of the resources being used.

Attached is a picture of the task manager and Resource Monitor when this is happening along with the information you requested.

OS is Windows 10 21H2

I have renamed the extension of the LeicensingLog so you will need to change that back,

I had thought that I could reply to the email to get this into this forum. But I see that I was wrong.

Any help trying to determine why this is happening would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so kindly,

John

[youngjedi]

Hello,

One thing that I have noticed is that if I delete the profile folder for the user, it will search fast once and then every time after that it searches the same pdf very slow.

I tried this with a brand new profile on the computer and run into the same issue. The first time we run a search it runs normal speed and then every search beyond this one search goes slow.

[N29900526auqn]

I have found a way to fix a problem that I had, but I don't know if this will fix the problem of speeding up Adobe Acrobat Reader's ability to function faster in all aspects. I had an issue where Adobe's search function was incredibly slow to find text within a PDF document or multiple documents. I found a way to make regular searching and advanced searching for text in PDF documents faster to the point where the search results are displayed almost instantaneously. Before this fix, searching could take 2 to 3 minutes to find all the strings of text within a folder containing 5 PDF files that were each about 700 pages in size.

Here are the steps to perform the fix:

1.) Open Adobe Reader directly (do not open it by opening a file such as a PDF to open. If Adobe Reader is already open, close it and make sure it is completely closed [not running in the background]).

2.) Go to Edit > Preferences.

3.) Under Categories: click on Documents.

4.) Under the "Open Settings" make sure that the "Restore last view settings when reopening documents" box is unchecked. If it is unchecked, continue to the next step. If it is checked, uncheck it, click the OK button at the bottom, and restart Adobe again directly.

5.) Under Categories: click on Search.

6.) Under the "Fast Find" area, click on the "Purge Cache Contents" button, then make sure the "Enable fast find" box is checked, and lastly, increase the Maximum Cache Size: to at least 1000 MB. (the default size should be 100 MB).

7.) Click the OK button at the bottom, and restart Adobe again directly.

8.) Open all of the documents you want to search text for and type a string of text that will appear somewhere in the document, or documents. (the searching might take 5 to 10 minutes or longer for big documents or when searching a folder with multiple PDFs).

9.) Wait for the searches to complete.

10.) Go back into Edit > Preferences > Under Categories: click on Documents.

11.) Under the "Open Settings" check the "Restore last view settings when reopening documents" box, and click the OK button at the bottom.

12.) Repeat steps 8 and 9.

13.) Restart Adobe again directly.

(note: increasing the Maximum Cache Size from 100 MB might be optional, I am not 100% sure about this.)

I have different versions of Adobe running on different computers including reagular Adobe Acrobat Reader, and Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. On all of the versions I have, this fix worked for me. I hope this helps.