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

[Guest]

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.

[Plum25310068oayz]

This solution does not work. I have tried several times. No change. Did you try this yourself in Adobe Reader (the product you cannot edit with - only read documents)

[MeenakshiNegi]

Hi Plum,

Would you mind elaborating on the issue you are experiencing?

Did you check if the issue occurs with the particular PDF?

Share the Reader DC and OS version with us.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

[JTSNana]

Does not purge. Nothing happens when I try to purge.  Still unable to utilize the search function.

[AlexColvin]

The purge fix does not work. I downloaded a scanned 1856 monograoh from Internet Archives. Their search function worked fine. I cannot find a single word in the PDF version. Running Adobe Acrobat Pro (v. current) on Win 11. This is some kind of joke and very disruptive to my research. I use AAPro a lot and many of its tools. This is a first. 

[Plum25310068oayz]

I find it sporadic - most of the time it does not work. When it does, I am
kind of surprised. NOT good, Adobe!

[Brianna Anger]

Did not work for me. I also do not think the other suggestions regarding the fonts are applicable as I used to be able to successfully use the search function on this document, but something has changed and I no longer can now.

Any new susggestions?

[MeenakshiNegi]

Hi Brianna Anger,

Thank you for reaching out.

Please let us know if the issue occurs with a particular PDF or all PDFs. Ensure that you are not using the scanned PDF. Did the problem occur with any word you try to search?

Share the PDF on which the issue occurs when searching Word. Also, share the Acrobat and OS version details.

We will check the issue once we have more information.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

[Ted36546432gjpg]

Great. A huge help. Thank you. 

[Plum25310068oayz]

I am able to search for a word in a pdf I have. I assume it will work for
all pdfs.

[shalinis38966990]

Adobe acrobat reader DC Release Version 2015.010.20056

[shalinis38966990]

I cannot select or highlight it.  Which I was able to do earlier.  Somehow I cannot do anything on Adobe.

[JayPP]

I have Adobe Reader DC version 2020.009.20063 and tried two or three recommended ways to solve this by going to the registry... did not work.  I solved my failure to search problem simply by going to EDIT, PREFERENCES, SEARCH and de-selected "ENABLE FAST FIND."  Now I can search my 571 page document with ease.  Prior to this discovery, when I tried to search, I got an "exception processing message 0xc000007b" message.

[Eduardo Moreira]

Thanks a lot for the help. I've been looking for a solution for a long time and the only tip that worked was yours!

[shalinis38966990]

I am trying to attached the file/image, ...here you go.

[defaulto5c0g28itq6b]

Hi,

I saw your thread and think I found a fix for your pdf search issue. Nothing worked for me either. When I download my eBay orders as "Microsoft print to Pdf". I couldn't search for a keyword. But when I downloaded them as "save as Pdf" this fixed the problem. 

So it could be the format you are downloading the pdf in the first place. 

Hope that helps 🙂

[billdakelski]

this did not work for me, it only happens in some docs and not others

[AnandSri]

Hello Billdakelski,

We're sorry for the trouble you had with Adobe Reade. Does these PDFs contain images only or text as well? Are those scanned PDF?

If after trying the suggestions above, you are still experiencing the issue, try repairing Adobe Reader once from help>repair installation(only for Windows), reboot the machine after repair.

Make sure that you have the latest version of Adobe Reader installed, check for any pending updates from help>check for updates. Reboot the machine after installing any updates.

If it is specific to one PDF, Is it possible to share the PDF file with us so that we can test it at our end? To share the file, please use Adobe Send feature, login to https://cloud.acrobat.com/send using your Adobe ID(email) and password, upload the file, share the link to files via private message only, How Do I Send Private Message

What is the dot version of Adobe Reader installed? To identify refer to Identify the product and its version for Acrobat and Reader DC

Is it a Mac or Windows machine and what is the version of OS installed?

Let us know how it goes and share your observation.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

[SSUMMERS27]

I am having same issue when searching drawings. 

I was advised the following:

"The only thing that gets locked is the viewport. None of our layers our locked.

For our tags, they are annotative blocks that get edited per instance."

Can someone explain how to fix this please?

Thank you!

[georgehifi]

This is also happening to me, I cannot use word search, it come up with "no matches were found.

This is the PDF I'm looking at and trying to search. 

https://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?PageNum=0&docid=10469042&IDKey=8145247719B0%0D%0A&HomeUrl=http%3A%2F%2...

[AlanBountham]

I tried the edit - preferences - purge cache and it did not work.

I eventually got it to work by clicking the EDIT PDF tab, and it made the document "editable".

after that, the search function worked. 

if its a big document, go to settings and click "make all pages editable", and i'll run thru all the pages.

im using adobe acrobat pro 2017.

[Merlot22119460bjd4]

Thanks

Pls expalin how you made it editable. It is driving me nuts!  Now sure why it stopped "Find". It stoped all action s but I managed to get Save working. I get: Internal error occured! 

Thank you

Mohga

[Clarice Qiu]

You can print the document as pdf. Then transfer the digitally printed pdf document into word. Then use the word document for searching. #hack

[Cesare5E34]

Yes, it worked.

In my case, I only converted the document into word and searched on it, but...

Really strange things happen in the world. I think it is because of Covid 19, isn't it?

[djkrys]

It appears Adobe is absolutely rubbish at doing the one thing it's supposed to do.  I too have just discovered I have a pdf manual that I cannot search.  The document contains text but it is not in any format that can be understood - for example if I copy the word "Control" from the document, this is the result ".-20.+", I understand if the text has been compressed for the web, however, if only the program could then decode it back when loaded wouldn't that be an amazing idea. What a shame that they haven't bothered.  I have a document, I can read it page by page, I can select all the text but if I paste it into anything other program it is gibberish so they may have just as well sent me a jpg and have done with it.  What is the point of Adobe Acrobat Reader if it can't undertand it's own compression.

[Peg5ED1]

Might want to add that you need to close the file and reopen it.  Otherwise it doesn't work right away.