Printing from Excel, Adobe reader doesn't recognise "-".

[David_S]

Hi All,

First post, so go easy if I've done something wrong!

I generated a PDF by printing from an excel worksheet.

The sheet had a few thousand serial numbers in the format xxxx-xxxxx.

It generates perfectly but when I go to search in the PDF it doesn't recognise the dash at all and see's it as a space.

So if I search xxxx-xxxxx I get no result but if I search xxxx xxxxx I get the result I am looking for.

This doesn't help as my customers use the dash in their search requests.

Any assistance is much appreciated!

[CtDave]

Something to play with.  From Excel you can create a PDF using the Microsoft routine(s). IF you have Acrobat DC (Pro or Standard) installed you can create a PDF from Excel using Acrobat's PDFMaker or by "printing" to the Acrobat installed Adobe PDF virtual printer.

If you do not use Acrobat consider using the free trial (fully functional) for Pro. Run trials using each of the three methods and do a simple Find. Use Acrobat Pro to embed an index to use Search. Use Acrobat Pro to build a cataloged index of the one or more output PDFs to use full advanced Search (search options are most robust here).