I have one of my text books for school as a .pdf file and any term I put into find yields no results, even words like "the" don't come up. I am able to search most other documents I have tried and even the same document using the .pdf reader on my phone. Is there anything that could cause Reader problems? The book is around 1300 pages if that makes any difference.
Edit: I just installed both Nitro Reader and Foxit Reader, they both were able to search the document with no problems at all.
The document is probably made of a collection of scanned pages. If the author did not run OCR on the document, then it does not contain any real text and can't be searched.
Like I already said in my post I am able to search it with 3 other programs so it is obviously not just images. Even in Adobe Reader I am able to select and highlight the text.
Lol, well seeing as they couldn't be bothered to even read my post the comment adds nothing to this thread so I would consider it spam. And while I'm sure try67 does try to be helpful I think they mostly just want people to see their posts and find their blog selling Adobe scripts. As far as being welcome here I was just trying to see if anyone knew about/had any experience with this issue. As I mentioned I found two other programs that function correctly so if I can't get reader to work I will just stop using it and move on. Either way I wasn't every going to make it past 10 posts on here. Thanks for your reply anyways though and don't worry I won't mark you as spam. 😜
@try67: Thanks for the additional response, what exactly do you mean by a font issue though?
You have a lot of nerve... Accusing me of being a spammer in the first paragraph and then asking for my help in the second? Good luck figuring it out on your own.
Like I already said in my post I am able to search it with 3 other programs so it is obviously not just images.
That doesn't mean anything. Maybe those programs perform OCR behind-the-scenes...
Even in Adobe Reader I am able to select and highlight the text.
You should have mentioned that in your original post... In that case, it's probably a font issue. Also, make sure you're using the very latest version of Reader.
I have the same problem when I try to "FIND" a word on a document created by CAD application - Altium; But for other pdf documents, "FIND" function is OK. I am using Adobe Reader X 10.1.3.
Some CAD programs do not imbed text, they use plotting commands to create graphics that look like text. Can you post a pdf somewhere for us to look at.
After I changed to Foxit pdf reader, there is no problem to search pdf file that the CAD tool - Altium created; Even the old version Adobe pdf reader has no problem. So I guess it is not related to imbed text.
I have the same problem with pdf files from ECSCAD. It worked i think till Adobe Reader X
It seems that the Reader "Fast Find" has a error with creating the hash for the index file and allows the create of a 0000000000... indexfile wich leads after in search to land on wrong pages or things that are not found.
In the Folder: C:\Users\*\AppData\LocalLow\Adobe\Acrobat\11.0\Search
There is a file with only a lot of "0" as Name.
For my work the workaround is, to disable the "Fast Find" option in "Edit" -> "Preferences" -> "Search" even when the search takes longer, i dont have to worry about landing on a wrong page or missleading text not found.
I have checked with different Adobe Reader versions. It seemed to work with version 9.5.0 (on Windows XP), but not with version 10.1.4 (Server 2008) or 11.0.5 (Windows 8.1). I tried with different readers (Nitro PDF and also the one in built in to Windows 9) and with those the search works fine in my document. The PDF documents we try are generated in Oracle reports.
So now my only solution is using the older version or a different PDF reader.
At some point, there is a need to clear the (Adobe) cache to use the search/find functions for ease. For instance, Adobe Reader XI, version 11.0.2 helps you in the follwoing's,
1. GOTO the "Edit" --> "Preferences",
2. Under the Categories goto "Search",
3. Under the "Fast Find", check mark on the 'Enable fast find', and
4. 'Purge the Cache Content', and
5. Enter the 'highest number' in "Maximum Cache Size (MB): tab".
I experienced this issue for the first time today. The source of the information wasn't the issue for me (we use InDesign), but purging the cache made search begin working again.
16
Replies
AdChoices