How to Search PDF
Arguable, one of the top pet peeves of any PDF user is the inability to search PDF text in overly long PDF files. This is especially true when it comes to handling a scanned or image PDF document. This is because scanned PDFs do not contain letters and words that are recognized as digital text. They are only an image of text and letters with no real data behind it.
For this reason, there is a special way to make a scanned PDF document searchable. This begins by making the text recognizable by using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology. Once this is done, you can search PDFs properly. With Acrobat 9 Pro, you can make text recognizable in a single document or in a number of documents.
To recognize text in a single PDF document by using Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro:
Open the scanned PDF. Choose OCR Text Recognition from the Document menu.
Choose Recognize Text Using OCR from the next menu.
Choose your settings in the Recognize Text dialogue box. You can modify the settings by clicking on Edit.
To recognize text in a number of documents quickly:
- Open Adobe Acrobat and choose OCR Text Recognition from the Document menu.
- Choose Recognize Text in Multiple Files Using OCR.
- Click Add File in the dialogue box. Choose Add files, Add folders, or Add Open Files.
Select your files or folders.
Choose your settings in the Output Options dialogue box. Again, select your options in the Recognize Text dialogue box that appears. Click on OK.- After running the OCR engine on your scanned PDF, you should be able to search in PDF just as you would in a native PDF.
