Search function does not work on Reader

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
October 12, 2022
3 replies
3853 views

I have Windows 11 Home and the Adobe Acrobat Reader 64 bit version. The word search function does not work on any of my PDF documents. I used the "Edit>Preferences>Search>Purge Cache Contents" instructions and still does not work. Is there a soultion for this? Thanks much in advance.

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T

Test Screen Name

Legend

Actually, it's even worse than this. The file you can't search doesn't contain text, but it wasn't just scanned either. It seems that Maricopa County Justice Courts actually did something called "outlining text" which replaces each letter by shapes instead. This doesn't happen by accident, and isn't something you did. This is a favourite trick of people submitting evidence, to stop the other parties searching easily, but it's surprising to see the courts themselves doing that. It may be worth complaining.

Do you have other problem files? Especially ones you made yourself (I had the impression you were making them, rather than using files made by someone else...)

jane-e

Community Expert

@JustinBClifff26548496pul1 wrote:

I have Windows 11 Home and the Adobe Acrobat Reader 64 bit version.

I've moved your post from Acrobat to Acrobat Reader.

Is the file a scanned image?

Jane

J

JustinBClifff26548496pul1Author

Participating Frequently

Hi. It's a PDF file I downloaded from a government site. I can't even highlight text tp copy and paste into Notpad. Odd, as I was able to search text a few months ago...

try67

Community Expert

That's where I'm confused. Why are some PDF files searchable and others not? Is it how the file was originally saved? Other? Thanks for your help, I'm not a technical person so I'm just trying to understand the difference in PDF file tpyes/=.

PDF files can contain all kinds of elements: "real" text, images, graphics, etc. Only the former can be searched. Text that's a part of an image can't be searched, because it's not real text. It's just a part of an image.

But the creator of the file (or anyone else with Acrobat) can run Text Recognition (also known as OCR) on it and (try to) convert the text in the images to real text. If it's successful, then you can search for it.

try67

Community Expert

Are you able to select the text you're searching for on the page? If so, copy it and then paste into another application, like Notepad. Does it appear correctly in that application after doing so?

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