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.
To search a PDF with PDF Converter Elite 5:
- 1Start PDF Converter Elite and open a PDF by clicking the Open icon.
- 2Click on the Edit menu and then on Search Text.
- 3The Search dialog will open where you can enter the word or phrase you are searching for.
- 4You can untick the box Case sensitive if you are not sure if the word contains Capslock.
- 5You can also tick Whole words only box to include only whole words.
- 6Click the Next button to find all words that are in the text.
- 7Click Cancel when you are done.
To Recognize Text in a Single PDF Document by using Adobe Acrobat 11 Pro:
- 1Open the scanned PDF and go to View > Tools > Text Recognition.
- 2Choose In This File from the Text Recognition section in the Tools Pane.
- 3Choose 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:
- 1Open Adobe Acrobat and choose Text Recognition from the Tools Pane menu.
- 2Choose In Multiple Files.
- 3Click Add File in the dialogue box. Choose Add files, Add folders, or Add Open Files.
- 4Select your files or folders.
- 5Choose your settings in the Output Options dialogue box. Again, select your options in the Recognize Text dialogue box that appears.
- 6Click 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.
