Limiting search in PDF

[raygun2000]

We are looking at ways of improving search results inside PDF files. For example, all editable text is searchable, including things like running headers and footers, and as a result, too many irrelevant hits.

With certain tools we can convert text to paths but these seem to be global in nature. For example, we can't have a routine that would take a particular region on a page (e.g. a header or footer) and exclude it from search results.

In anyone has a solution to post process PDF files to exclude certain areas from search, we would love to hear it!

Cheers from Montreal!

[try67]

If you want to do it in Acrobat it would possibly require a plugin, or you could do the search entirely using a script. In the latter case it is possible to limit the search to a specific area of the page, but it's much slower than the built-in search command.