Search function in PDF not working for words in a pdf document

[Gast]

I am using Adobe Reader Ver 10.1.1 (All updates)

I have a pdf document in which I am unable to search for words. No words in the document are found even though they do exist. If I copy a word from within the document and paste it into the search criteria then instead of getting the word that I copied, I get substitute characters and it can in fact find these characters as the word being searched.

The document is a catalog and can be downloaded from the following URL.

http://www.carbatec.com.au/getcatalogue?zenid=d1cuvbat0ois0g37r0r33vnah1

I will appreciate any help as to why I cannot search for words in the document.

[try67]

It's probably related to your choice of fonts (Swiss721-BT). Try embedding the full font in the file instead of just a subset.

[nelliy2555357]

Hello, I have a similar issue using sommet light. can you please explain what you mean?

[Dave Merchant]

Read my post here - it's an issue with Unicode table corruption when the PDF was created. Nothing you can do about it other than contact the website owner and tell them.

[Gast]

I have put this back to the company that produced the catalogue so we will see how they respond. One would hope that they have not purposely corrupted to prevent copying and in doing so prevent key word searches. I should think that the great advantage of a catalogue that can be searched for key words would outweigh trying to alleviate copying of the catalogue.

[Gast]

Thank you Dave Merchant and try67 for your responses. As per my previous post, I contacted the company re the catalogue and they have responded favourably. I'll include their response because it gives the reason for the search failure as document compression which you might find interesting. I'll await their new catalogue and see if they have fixed the problem.

Company response:

Thank you very much for your input.  And yes, you are correct, the compression we used for the current catalogue's PDF format does strip out text included in the catalogue.  We used the compression settings we did with the intention of minimising download time, however I take your point about including text for search purposes (which I also utilise when I'm scanning through PDFs).

We will actually be posting out our new catalogue next week and we'll release the new PDF version on the website at the same time.  I've asked our graphic designer to ensure that the PDF we use for the new catalogue includes searchable text.

[Redmundial80 · Accepted solution]

1. Open up PDF file in Adobe Reader
2. Go to the top menu bar and click Edit then Preferences
3. When the Preferences box opens, select the Search category on the left
4. When in the Search category look to the bottom and click on the Purge Cache Contents box/button
5. Finally Click OK in the bottom right of Preferences and re-attempt search
6. The PDF should now be fully searchable

[BrianMS51]

Hi

I have been struggling for ages to try and search in certain PDF documents and had given up. Then I decided to look on this forum. The first suggestion that I tried was this one AND IT WORKED BRILLIANTLY.

Thank you soooooooo much

[shalinis38966990]

I still cannot search.

[Marco25165795hylw]

Same problem. I ended up saving all pages as JPG, then OCR as PDF. It works

[Steve26597692z4a8]

Thank you ! the OCR approach wroked perfectly for me. I used PCR OCR X enterprise edition on Mac OSX to make a multipage compression corrupted document searchable. It save me hours. Here's the tool: https://solutions.weblite.ca/pdfocrx/

[shalinis38966990]

I cannot search since I have Windows 10.  Please help.

[Adorobat]

Hi shalinis38966990,

Could you please tell if its a single document on which you are not able to search or it is happening with other documents as well?

Have you tried with other document?

Have you perform the steps which are given in post 1, 2 and 5?

What version of Acrobat Reader do you have?

Try to check if there are updates available for Reader, Open Reader>navigate to Help>Check for Updates.

Let us know if you face any issue.

Thank You!

Shivam

[shalinis38966990]

Since I have Windows 10, my adobe stop "search" function in all pdf

documents. Yesterday I updated my adobe thinking maybe new version will be

able to do the search function. It is still not searching for my adobe

files.

[Adorobat]

Have you performed the steps which are given above ?

Also try to reboot the Computer and then start Reader , locate Adobe Reader shortcut>right click>Properties>Compatibility>check the box Run this program in compatibility mode for>select Windows 7>Apply>OK

[~graffiti]

Are you actually opening the pdf files in Acrobat Reader and not either in a web browser or Microsoft Edge (which is the default pdf viewer in Windows 10)?

[shalinis38966990]

I still cannot "search". I can see the word written there, but Adobe says

cannot find. Attached is my screen shot.

I have updated acrobat, rebooted my computer.

Thanks.

[~graffiti]

A. You cannot attach an image via an email response. For that you need to come into the forums and use the insert image option. I would recommend doing so since I think a screenshot of what you are looking at could be helpful.

B. You haven't actually answered my question. Open the file then at the top of your screen choose Help>About...

What does it say there as far as what product you are using? I could probably tell if I could see a screenshot.

[shalinis38966990]

I submitted the screenshot on forum. It went to OssieMac. Can you see as

well?

[try67]

This file is composed of images (probably scanned ones). As such you can't copy or search the text in it.

[shalinis38966990]

I already had ruled out scanning situation.  It is download from CMS website. I was able to search in the same file before.

[try67]

Can you share a link to this file?

On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 1:25 AM, shalinis38966990 <forums_noreply@adobe.com>

[try67]

Seeing the text doesn't mean much. Are you able to select it using the text selection tool? If so, what happens when you copy it and paste into another application, like Notepad? What is the result?

[sonjap50171835]

This fixed our problem!  Our doc locked up and we could not search anything.  Now it works perfectly.  THANK YOU.

[defaultq6rqdg9a9z87]

Redmundial80's suggestion worked for me. I was searching a PDF which I had searched successfully many times before but I was now getting a "nothing found" message. After purging the cache, I was able to search again. Thank you Red!