Search in protected documents

[frankspade]

I download my bank statement, which comes as PDF. I can read everything fine. When I search for some content, I get the answer "Not found" even though I can see the word I searched for.

I beleave this has something to do with the fact that the document is protected. What bothers me is, that AR responds not found instead of "Search not allowed".

Am I the only one who is bothered by this? Isn't this something the software should be able to do right?

[try67]

The fact that you see a piece of text on the page doesn't mean it's actually there... It could just be a part of an image, or it could be real text but with bad encoding, which is why the application can't find it when you search for it.

The way to test it out is to double-click on the word using the Text Selection tool. Is the word selected? If so, what happens if you copy it and then paste it in another application (like Word or Notepad)? How does it appear there?

A security policy can be applied to prevent the contents from being copied, not from being searched, so that's not the issue, most likely.

[frankspade]

Thanks for your reply.

Please forgive me, I forgot to mention that I can double-click any word, date, amount or image and get it selected, but it is not possible to copy it, because right-clicking doesn't give me that or any option.

In the menue the copy option and others are greyed out.

[try67]

Since the contents can't be copied (due to a security policy, most likely) we can't know for sure if their encoding is correct or not.

[frankspade]

Well, thanks. Does your answer imply that if the encoding where correct, searching would be possible even though copying is not allowed as you can see below?

On the extended tab it says Protected mode: On.

Which leaves my question open: Shouldn't AR recognize that it can't find anything and say so, instead of aluring me into beleaving that it couldn't find what I was searching for?

[try67]

I believe so, yes.

[frankspade]

Thank you.

One last question:

How do I get Adobe's attention to this issue?

Thanks for your valuable time and knowledge. Keep up the good work!

[try67]

Attention to what, exactly? This is not a bug, it's the expected behavior.

[frankspade]

Oops, I thought we had worked out that AR should recognize that it can't find anything because of the protection, let me know about it and not "pretend" that what I was searching for isn't there?

[try67]

That's not (necessarily) what's happening. As I said, it could be that it's not finding anything because the text is encoded incorrectly, regardless of the security policy.

[try67 · Accepted solution]

I just tested it on a file where I know the encoding is correct, and even though I applied a security policy to it that prevents any content from being extracted I could search and find words in it just fine. This confirms my suspicion that your file is not encoded correctly.

[frankspade]

Thanks a bunch, that helps to move on.