Way to get "Advanced Search" to search just a folder without its subfolders?

[OsakaWebbie]

When using Advanced Search to look for a word or phrase in all the PDFs in a folder, is there a way to stop it from also searching all subfolders? I have a folder I often search, but I don't want it to drill deeper, because it takes forever. I'd rather not have to rearrange the file structure non-intuitively just to keep Acrobat's search from going into the weeds. I'm surprised there isn't a checkbox to control whether to include subfolders, but I don't see one, even when I click "Show More Options".

[ls_rbls · Accepted solution]

You must define a catalogue.

Using text searches with the Advanced Search is not the proper method for what you're trying to achieve.

See how is done with these Adobe Help Center guides:

• https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/acrobat/using/creating-pdf-indexes.html#creating_pdf_indexes

• https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/acrobat/using/searching-pdfs.html

[OsakaWebbie]

Thanks for the response. Are you saying that I would need to edit each of the PDFs to add an embedded index, then create a catalog for those indexed PDFs, and every time I create a new PDF (export from InDesign) I would need to add an index to it and update the catalog to include it? These PDFs span many years, and I find the file timestamps useful. So not only would adding indexes to each of them be very laborious, all the file timestamps would be changed. If this is what you're suggesting, I'd much rather redo my file structure to avoid subfolders in the first place.

Why isn't there simply a choice of whether to include subfolders in the search or not? That's a normal part of most other search dialogs, shell commands, etc. I don't mind the slowness of searching non-indexed PDFs - I just want to be able to restrict it to one folder level sometimes.

[ls_rbls]

I already answered your question.

Seems like you didn't read both links that I posted till the end.

There are two methods, embedding an index on each PDF, which is convenient only when you have defined an organized way of doing things in a production environment. For example,  adding a specific keyword in the document description of that PDF  or tags, or even prefixing the filenames and saving them to specific folder consistently.

The other way is to catalog a big group of PDFs altogether in a folder to perform a Full Text Index Search, which is done using the Index tool (not the Advanced Search from a PDF document that is already opened in Acrobat).

But obviously, this is not how you have been working with Acrobat, otherwise you wouldn't be inquiring about how to search for folders, which has nothing to do with the Advanced Search option unless you defined a folder with an index, and place all the desired bulk of PDFs in that folder.

The main answer to your question is shown, right off the bat, at the begginning of the second link that I posted for you:

"If you work with large numbers of related PDFs, you can define them as a catalog in Acrobat Pro, which generates a PDF index for the PDFs.

Searching the PDF index—instead of the PDFs themselves—dramatically speeds up searches."

So what you must do first is to move or copy all the PDFs that you want to a folder that will be unique for the search. And in this folder is where the index will be created and saved  to.

The Full Text Search wizard will offer you options to add or remove subfolders too.

Just sift through the readings a little more and you'll see the examples and explanations. 

It is not that complicated using this method.

[OsakaWebbie · Accepted solution]

Seems like you didn't read both links that I posted till the end.

I did read both documents completely. But I somehow got the impression that the PDFs needed to already have embedded indexes before a catalog could include them (I thought the catalog was going to reference the indexes in the documents). The phrase "generates a PDF index for the PDFs" sounded like an index of the PDFs (high level), not an index of all the text in all the PDFs.

Anyway, I have now made a catalog (and it works), but it was laborious to make, as there are lots of subfolders, and they had to be excluded from the catalog one at a time - each time I clicked Add to add another to the "Exclude these subdirectories" list, the browse dialog started at my user folder on C:, which is nowhere near where this stuff is (three levels down on a network drive). And I'll need to remember to open the catalog and run Rebuild every time I export a new PDF.

The Full Text Search wizard will offer you options to add or remove subfolders too.

What is this "Full Text Search wizard"? Are you just talking about the dialog to create the catalog, or something else? So far, the only place I've found where subfolders are mentioned is the "New Index Definition" dialog's "Exclude these subdirectories" list. The term "Full Text Search" isn't on either of the help pages you linked.

[ls_rbls]

Sorry, I meant to say "Full Text Index With Catalog" which you already did. Thanks for catching that.

And yes, I've noticed that the way Adobe Acrobat interfaces with the operating system's shell is very old school.

That is why I suggested to plan a strategy, like taking the time to manually copy the bulk of files that you want in your catalogue and place them all in a unique folder.

That said, I should've also specify that such folder (or directory) must be created in your current user account directory to avoid the hassle of dealing with multi-level directories every time you wish to define a new catalogue.

That is the hardest part, but after that your workflow should be solid and straight forward (considering the lack of more modernized file structure navigation).

[OsakaWebbie]

Due to space constraints on my laptop, I need this to stay on the network drive. But I've done the hard part now, because when I open the catalog to the place where I tell it to rebuild, it fortunately remembers all my excluded subdirectories. I'll probably set up a few catalogs for other places I search a lot - thanks for the clues.

Aside: I didn't know that more than one post can be marked as the "correct answer" in this forum - thanks for doing that, because indeed, it's the combination of things you and I wrote that would be most helpful to others. There have been other threads in the past where I didn't know what to mark as correct because none were complete by themselves - now I know I can mark more than one.

[ls_rbls]

You're very welcome.

Happy to help.

[OsakaWebbie]

I have a related question. I discovered that in addition to a .pdx file and .log file in the folder being indexed, it creates a new subfolder with the name I chose for the index and puts two files in it (a tiny index.idx and a very large index1.idx). Having that extra subfolder is a bit confusing, since in the two catalogs I've made so far, I've named the catalog something similar to the target folder's name (for obvious reasons, since that's the thing I'm indexing). Is there a way to have those index files in the same (top) folder rather than a new subfolder? I can rename the catalogs with something more distinctive, like "PDF index - JH archives" instead of "JH archives", but I would prefer to simply have no additional folder at all, but just the four files.

By the way, it's still utterly baffling that the browse for adding folders to the exclusion list starts at the top of my user area. After all, the whole point is what folders to exclude that are under the folder being indexed, so the rest of the file system is meaningless! [scratches head]

[ls_rbls]

Yes I've noticed the same.

I've tried making the folder hidden and it doesn't do anything useful either to work around your observation.

I have to dig more about that because I'm a little confused too.

I don't mind the pdx file and the log file created automatically there.

And even the tiny index file that acts as a pointer for the Advanced Search  program, in addition to its code, which instructs the actual Advanced Search program what to look for in, provided in the very large index file that contains a list of all the files that will be processed, also doesn't bother me.

But the empty folder that is automatically with the same name of the catalogue folder seems like a bad design behavior to me (IMHO).