Finding text but Adobe not identifying letters or numbers

[Chris24894525mxvt]

Hello all,

I am currently using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, and one issue I am having is trying to find text in the document. However, the issue is that the text appears to be special characters instead of actual numbers or letters. I tried using CTRL+F and used the settings to find my way through. CTRL+F didn't work because the text appears to be special characters that aren't actual letters or numbers. This is evident when I copied the text from the PDF document into a Word document, and the pasted text was just blank square boxes for each character. The only time it became actual letters and characters was when I click Edit PDF, and dashed text boxes appear (probably because of OCR). I am on a 300 page document so eye-searching through all of the pages is not an option. Is there a solution to this?

[Dave__M]

A few questions - Did you create this PDF?  Do you have access to the source (original, pre-PDF) document?  Did you perform the OCR?  

It sure sounds like a scanned/OCRed doc, and you may not have many options.  But if you have the source, or pre-OCR version, you may be able to get some better results with a fresh OCR pass using different settings.

My best,

Dave

[Chris24894525mxvt]

Turns out that the file was flattened, so that's probably the reason.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

That'll do it.

[Dave__M]

Yup!