Does iFilter see content of glass-scanned PDFs?

[josephinde]

Does iFilter see content of glass-scanned PDFs? I need to search for a character string in a directory containing 25,000+ PDFs that are both scanned and generated by CAD drawing programs. Thanks!

Message was edited by: Joseph Norton to correct a typo 4-4-16 11:45 EDST.

[Bernd Alheit]

What scanning options do you use?

[josephinde]

Many of the newer files were "generated/exported/Save As" to PDF from AutoCAD, Inventor, SolidWorks and MS Office applications. Many of the older files were scanned at 300x300 DPI to 'PDF Compact' (for file size conservation) from a copier/printer/scanner so they are little more than static images. Most of these could be run the OCR feature from Acrobat Pro but, at only one at a time for that many files, we would be here for two forevers. (Unless iFilter can batch this process?). Thanks.

[Bernd Alheit · Accepted solution]

‌iFilter uses only the available text in the file.

[CtDave]

An image of text (the scanner output that was put into PDF) has no renderable text for a search/find feature to parse through.

Low file size images (PDF or otherwise) will, typically, be of too low a resolution to yield OCR output that is of much usability.

Be well...

[josephinde]

Thank you, CtDave and Bernd. I hear you(s). But unless someone knows of an uber-batch file tool that can OCR PDFs en masse, without opening each one individually, I will return to the proverbial drawing board.

[CtDave]

Sounds as if you're in need of a server grade product. A search via Bing or Google will yield several prospects.

Be well...