Searchable pdfs from old pdfs?

I've got about 15 years of pdfs from technical journals, etc. scattered in a number of directories (technology changes, and new categories emerge, etc.). Rather than attempt to sort, etc., I'd like to dump them into one storage directory and let search tools find what I need. To do that, I need all these old pdfs to be searchable. I have a scanner that will do OCR, but I have a real issue with wasting the paper to print them all, only to scan them back in.
Is there a software solution to this? I'm running Lion OS.

How to Transfer Everything from an Old iPad to New iPad
http://osxdaily.com/2012/03/16/transfer-old-ipad-to-new-ipad/
iOS: Transferring information from your current iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a new device
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2109
Moving Content to a New iPad
http://tinyurl.com/qzk2a26
How to Transfer App Data and Game Saves from One iOS Device to Another
http://lifehacker.com/5891964/can-i-transfer-app-data-and-game-saves-from-my-iph one-to-a-new-ipad
How to transfer data from your old iPad to your new iPad
http://www.imore.com/how-transfer-data-your-old-ipad-your-new-ipad-air-or-retina -ipad-mini
Transferring your prepaid cellular data account depends on your carrier. AT&T lets you move it yourself when you go to Cellular Data in Settings and log into your account with your previous AT&T user name and password. For iPads with Sprint service, you can set up an account on the new iPad and contact Sprint Customer Care (888-211-4727 and go through the menus) to deactivate the old plan and get credit for unused service. For Verizon, call the company’s customer service number for mobile broadband support (800-786-8419) and ask to have your account transferred.
 Cheers, Tom

Similar Messages

How to make a searchable PDF from an AutoCAD DWG file

We have PDF files created from AutoCAD, but they are not searchable using Adobe Reader X. I checked the source DWG file to find what font was used, as suggested in an old post, and found that the DWG uses Arial font. I am not sure what version of AutoCAD was used to create the file, but I can open it with AutoCAD LT 2011. Can anyone guide me to a way to make searchable PDF files from these DWG files?

Ok, this is as I feared; something CAD programs are particularly likely to do is draw text with a pen, rather than use text. There might be options in AutoCAD to control this.

How to transfer iBooks books & PDFs from old iPad to new iPad?

(Well, it seems my title got truncated; originally it read: How to transfer iBooks books & PDFs from old iPad to new iPad?)
I've recently gotten an iPad Air to replace my previous iPad 2. I have a bunch of books and PDFs in iBooks on the old iPad, and want to transfer them to the new iPad.
A search of Apple Support informs me that anything I've purchased from iBooks can be downloaded at any time to any of my devices (works like Amazon's Kindle system, apparently), but nearly all the content I have in iBooks on the iPad I've downloaded from other sources, so it won't be in my iBooks Store account (I might have bought one book there).
I've also seen several instructions on how to copy all my data from the old iPad to the new via Backup & Restore, but that seems to require restoring the new iPad to factory setup, which would delete everything I have on it now – including a bunch more books I've gotten since I started using the new iPad. And I don't want to copy everything, only the books/PDFs (the new iPad has everything I want, except for the books).
Since there seems to be no way to transfer files directly from one iPad to the other, it seems it must be done via iTunes on my MacBook Pro (and I want to copy all the books/PDFs to the computer anyway). So I connected the iPad 2 to my MacBook Pro (OS X 10.9.4) and opened iTunes (11.3.1). Then clicked on the iPad's name in the sidebar to the left, and on Books below it. I see a list of the books on the iPad. I check the little boxes by all their names to select them (not sure if that's necessary, but it seems like a good idea), then click on the Sync button at the lower right, to the right of the bar at the bottom of the window with colored bands showing memory usage on the iPad. A message appears saying "The app 'iBooks' was not installed on the iPad '[name]' because the app could not be found."
But iBooks is already on the iPad; I have it open and see the list of books in it, which matches the list shown in iTunes. The message has a "More Information" button; I click that and it opens an Apple Support article titled "iOS: An app you installed unexpectedly quits, stops responding, or won’t open": "Learn what to do if you see one of these issues with an app you downloaded from the App Store on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch: The app unexpectedly quits; The app stops responding; You can’t open the app." But none of these apply; the iBooks app is on the iPad, and works fine there.
The article suggests: (1) Restart the App. I've done that, no help. (2) Restart your device. Done that, no help. (3) Update your device software and your apps. The iPad is running iOS 6.1.3, iBooks 3.1.3; not the latest versions, no, but I'd rather not update it to newer, bigger, more power-hungry versions if I don't have to. Is it that iTunes 11 doesn't work with iOS 6? I haven't seen this stated anywhere.
So instead I click the OK button on the message, but nothing further happens, so far as I can tell: None of the books/PDFs on the iPad (about 380MB) appear in iBooks on the MacBook Pro.
I click on "Books" in the row of words across the top of the iTunes window, and it shows me the single PDF presently in iBooks on the MacBook Pro. I click the box by "Sync Books", and a message appears: "Are you sure you want to remove existing music, movies, TV shows, books, and tones from this iPad and sync with this iTunes library?" Well, no, that's exactly what I DON'T want to do. I don't want to erase the 380MB of books and PDFs on the iPad and replace them with the single PDF now in iBooks on the MacBook Pro. I want to copy the books from the iPad 2 to iTunes, so I can copy them back to the new iPad Air (if, God willing, I can figure out how to do that without erasing the books now on the iPad Air).
I've been working with Macintosh computers for over 26 years. It's always been a fairly simple process to copy files from one computer to another. I don't want to "sync" all the data (address book, email, God knows what else) on the iPad with the corresponding information on the MacBook Pro – especially if that will erase everything on the iPad (which has information not on the MacBook Pro, e.g. 380MB of books). I just want to copy the books and PDFs in iBooks from the old iPad to the MacBook Pro, then to the new iPad, adding them to the books on the new iPad, so I don't lose anything.
Can anybody give me a clue?

How to Transfer Everything from an Old iPad to New iPad
http://osxdaily.com/2012/03/16/transfer-old-ipad-to-new-ipad/
iOS: Transferring information from your current iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to a new device
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2109
Moving Content to a New iPad
http://tinyurl.com/qzk2a26
How to Transfer App Data and Game Saves from One iOS Device to Another
http://lifehacker.com/5891964/can-i-transfer-app-data-and-game-saves-from-my-iph one-to-a-new-ipad
How to transfer data from your old iPad to your new iPad
http://www.imore.com/how-transfer-data-your-old-ipad-your-new-ipad-air-or-retina -ipad-mini
Transferring your prepaid cellular data account depends on your carrier. AT&T lets you move it yourself when you go to Cellular Data in Settings and log into your account with your previous AT&T user name and password. For iPads with Sprint service, you can set up an account on the new iPad and contact Sprint Customer Care (888-211-4727 and go through the menus) to deactivate the old plan and get credit for unused service. For Verizon, call the company’s customer service number for mobile broadband support (800-786-8419) and ask to have your account transferred.
 Cheers, Tom

Hello, I have transferred my Acrobat XI Pro from old MAC to the new one. After the transfer can not open any PDF file. Any idea how to solve this?

Hello, I have transferred my Acrobat XI Pro from old MAC to the new one. After the transfer can not open any PDF file. Any idea how to solve this?

Hey ilyaz20360341,
Could you please specify how exactly did you transfer Acrobat from one MAC to other.
You might need to deactivate the software from your old machine and then activate it on the new one with the same serial number (for Acrobat license) or Adobe credentials (for Acrobat subscription).
If you have done the same way, then let me know if you are able to open Acrobat itself.
Do you get any specific error message while opening a PDF?
Hope to get your response.
Regards,
Anubha

Is there a program to extract email addresses from a searchable pdf?

Is there a program that will extract email addresses from a searchable pdf?
I scanned a 75 page excel spreadsheet and used OCR to create a searchable pdf. I've verified that the OCR did work, the email address are searchable, but I need a way to extract them from the pdf so that I can add them to an email list database. There is other data in the spreadsheets that is not needed and it is making it impossible to just copy and paste. Does anybody know if there is a program available that works on the mac platform for this. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Nate

Nate B- wrote:
Is there a program that will extract email addresses from a searchable pdf?
I scanned a 75 page excel spreadsheet and used OCR to create a searchable pdf. I've verified that the OCR did work, the email address are searchable, but I need a way to extract them from the pdf so that I can add them to an email list database. There is other data in the spreadsheets that is not needed and it is making it impossible to just copy and paste. Does anybody know if there is a program available that works on the mac platform for this. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Nate
Nate,
You might want to repost this in the Unix forum, or one of the scripts forums here:
AppleScripts: http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=724
Unix: http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=735
Automator: http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1261

Extractions from Searchable PDFs - Even After Auto-Tagging Cannot Save as PDF/A

I'm currently extracting relevant parts from 100+ page PDF files, but cannot save the extractions as PDF/A if they come from a searchable version, even after adding auto-tagging via the Accessibility function, but I can do so if they come from a non-searchable version of the PDF. Is this normal? If so, how do I convert a searchable PDF to a non-searchable one so that I can save its extracted pages as PDF/A?
After looking into this further, it now seems as though I cannot convert certain documents, whether searchable or non-searchable, into PDF/A. Could the person who sent these to me have saved them in a way to prevent conversion into PDF/A? This is a required standard for legal documents.
Message was edited by: Paul Ulrich

In Preflight, after I use "analyse and fix", three red X's appear next to
(1) Convert to PDF/A-1a;
(2) PDF document is not compliant with PDF/A-1a (2005); and
(3) True Type font has differences to standard encoding but is not a symbolic font.
Does this mean it could be compliant with PDF/A-1b, which would be good enough for legal documents (just need to be PDF/A)? However, with other documents that reached PDF/A-1b, when I open them, I light grey band appears at the top saying they purport to be PDF/A Compliant. That, however, does not happen with these documents... so how do I know if they are PDF/A okay?

I am in the process of doing a Proof Of Concept / Evaluating products that can help us build a Java Application to Convert a PDF document to a Searchable PDF. I wanted to check is there any simple JAVA API from Adobe to achive this ? Any direction in th

I am in the process of doing a Proof Of Concept / Evaluating products that can help us build a Java Application to Convert a PDF document to a Searchable PDF.
I wanted to check is there any simple JAVA API from Adobe to achive this ? Any direction in this regard is greatly appreciated.@

You can achieve this using LiveCycle PDF Generator JAVA API. You can find required code here:
Adobe LiveCycle * Quick Start (SOAP mode): Converting a Microsoft Word document to a PDF document using the Java API
In parameters:
//Set createPDF2 parameter values
String adobePDFSettings = "Standard";
String securitySettings = "No Security";
String fileTypeSettings = "Standard OCR";
"Standard OCR" file type setting will run OCR on input pdf. In the code, instead of doc file provide a pdf file. Resultant pdf will be searchable PDF i.e OCRed PDF.
Feel feel to ask any further questions.

Problem with scanning document to searchable pdf in HP Envy 4500

I just bought HP Envy 4500 , overall good printer, but I can't find option for scanning to searchable pdf. I already updated my desktop software and printer's firmware, but still there is no option "scan to searchable pdf". Do i have to download some other software from HP?

Hello katiemac,
Welcome to the HP Support Forums!
When you are scanning with the ENVY 4500, how are you doing performing the scan? For example, if you are not using the HP software or scanning from the front panel of the printer you may not be getting all the features.
What is the Operating System installed on the computer, Windows or Mac?
JERENDS
I work on behalf of HP
Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
Click the “Kudos Thumbs Up" to the left of the reply button to say “Thanks” for helping!

How can I correct "hidden" text in a searchable PDF file?

This seems like a simple question. However, the answers are invariably complex, do not yield the desired result, and often answer a different question entirely. I say all that just to warn people up front that the "problem" is easier than how many people and PDF application developers, including Adobe, typically understand it while the proposed "solutions" are invariably a total...well, botch is a reasonable word if a bit understated.
Here is the actual problem:
I have "searchable" PDF files created by scanning documents and running them through an OCR process. I create "searchable" PDF files in order to archive, index, and eventually enable searching for the documents scanned. A "searchable" PDF satisfies those criteria better than any other commonly used, "portable" archive format -- though I would be happy if someone could point out an obvious alternative I may have overlooked. I do not need perfect OCR results. If I need a document to edit or perhaps feed into a spreadsheet or database, I expect to be able to reprocess the page images in a given "searchable" PDF file to OCR and convert the contents to Word, RTF, Excel, or another file format as necessary with more care for the results than for the archived document itself. Therefore, the "searchable" PDF document is the scanned page images which compose it while the OCR generated "searchable" text is secondary, but still important. Therefore, each file must contain scanned page images of sufficient detail to be efficiently converted by OCR if possible and legible enough for whoever views the images to be able to work out what an OCR process may fail to understand. Once scanned, those pages are the "document" and therefore "immutable." However, OCR is imperfect. For a searchable document archive, it does not have to be, but some errors are significant in that they may prevent the document from being found by a search. Therefore, there must be a way to view and, if necessary, edit the "hidden" text in a "searchable" PDF without altering the visual display of a document or how it is printed. No strike-throughs. No visible "corrections." None of the stuff PDF editors want to insert into a PDF file when editing it. I do not want to edit the document without exporting it to a format appropriate for an editable document. I just want adequately "correct" hidden text in a "searchable" PDF file.
I apologize for the length and redundancy in my description of the problem. However, past attempts to explain my problem and objectives as well as what I have seen in reply to similar queries across the Internet indicate that most people trying to answer this question come at it from the same point of view shared by most, if not all, PDF tool or application vendors. They seem to think that any desire to edit a PDF file is a desire to have a PDF word processor of some sort. Or, they assume that the OCR process employed may need tweaking of the means by which people apply it and then a process like "find suspects" is adequate to deal with any errors. But no, those are not what I am trying to accomplish and answers which address those topics do not answer this question.
In short, which tool or application from any vendor will reveal the "searchable" hidden text in a PDF produced by any OCR or other process and then enable corrections to the hidden text without changing any document display parameters at all? Note, hidden text typically includes bounding box information denoting the portion of the image from which the text was recognized. That information must not be lost or changed when editing the "searchable" text.
So, any tools or applications capable of doing this? If Adobe Acrobat XI Pro can (use of a trial copy demonstrated that the hidden text content can be reviewed, but editing did not work by any straight-forward means I could work out while trying out the application), fine. However, $500.00 list or even a $200.00 possible upgrade from a copy of Adobe Acrobat X Standard which came with my scanner is a lot of money for personal use when review and edit of the OCR generated hidden text in a "searchable" PDF file is the only function I require. Therefore, other suggested tools or applications which do what I need for less would be greatly appreciated.

My "claim"? Actually I've made no "claim" such as you've mentioned.
Simply stated your OP has foundational premises that presume as factual what is not.
Here, we're in Adobe's hosted user forum for Acrobat.
Any other application use is not material.
Acrobat XI provides 3 OCR methods.
Searchable Image, Searchable Image (Exact) & ClearScan.
Only the first two provide the "hidden" text output.
(Glyphs have no stroke, no fill)
From back to the Acrobat 3 product family the design functionality of Searchable Image and Searchable Image (Exact) has been to facilitate the use of Find / Search.
The "hidden" text is can be touched up. Acrobat Pro provides the facility to view the hidden text.
So you can see what the OCR output that correlates to the bit-map images of the characters that are present.
With Acrobat XI Pro use Tools - Protection -Remove Hidden Information
In the Remove Hidden Information pane select "Hidden text" then "Show preview".
The default for the preview is "Show Only Hidden Text".
Back in the PDF --
You'd select some of the hidden text and retype what you suspect is the correct string of characters.
Save and return to the preview of the hidden text.
If you got it right, good. Continue.
If not, darn - try again.
Plug 'n chug -- somewhere over the rainbow it'll be done eh.
Full disclosure -- this is something I've done (enquiring minds don't you know).
I've found it to be a rather Sisypean undertaking.
So, "doable" but not practicable.
This is to be expected because such touchups are not the concern / focus of the output from Searchable Image or Searchable Image (Exact) - (the names tell it all).
To have touchup "editablity" of an OCR output using Acrobat make use of ClearScan.
ClearScan replaces recognized character bit-maps with a character from an Acrobat internal font.
The character strings can be selected to change to a generic, system available font.
Something that is good to know when embarking on the "tweak the PDF" journey is that PDF (the file format / technology as defined by its ISO Standard, ISO 32000-1) does not tolerate "editing". PDF is decidely not a word processor file format and "editing" can quickly render a PDF unusable.
Minor touchups can be made and your best "tool" for this is still Acrobat Pro. (Save As often and periodically "bank" the PDF via some file rename scheme.)
Be well...

HP Officejet Pro 8600 won't save scanned document in searchable PDF or .rtf format

HP Officejet Pro 8600 won't save scanned document in searchable PDF or .rtf format
The scanner scans the document without a problem but when I select 'SAVE' and
specify a location and file name, a system error 'The HP scan application was
unable to save the file to the specified location'. It will save a regular PDF file
or a JPG file with no problem, but trying to save an searchable PDF or .rtf file
results in the above mentioned system error.
This problem occurs either from HP SCAN or from the 8600 scan panel.
The computer is running Windows XP and the I.R.I.S. OCR software is
loaded.

Hello TrailsEnd,
Welcome to the HP Forums!
I understand you're receiving an error message "The HP scan application was unable to save the file to the specified location". I will do my best to assist you!
First, I would recommend downloading this tool called the Print and Scan Doctor. This tool diagnoses and helps resolve common printing, scanning, and connectivity problems, including: (This information is stated here.)
USB: Verifies that the USB connection from your computer to the HP product is working correctly.
Network: Verifies that the network connection between your computer and your network is working correctly.
Device Status Test : Checks for device errors such as out of paper, paper jams, carriage stalls, and paper feed issues, and then provides instructions for fixing the error.
Driver Check : Checks for missing or corrupt driver files.
Device Manager : Checks for problems in Device Manager that would prevent printing.
Device Online : Checks if the product has been paused or set to offline, and then sets the status back to online if necessary.
Print Queue : Checks for and clears pending print jobs in the print queue (a log of print jobs waiting to print).
Port Match : Checks the port settings for the HP product.
Device Conflicts : Checks for conflicts with other drivers, such as other printer brands.
Ink Issues : Checks the cartridges and ink levels for issues that affect print quality.
Print Settings : Checks and adjusts the print quality settings.
Test Print : Prints a test page for print quality evaluation, and provides options for cleaning and aligning the printhead if necessary.
Scan Tests : Checks the scan mechanism, drivers, and registry entries.
Let me know if this tool fixes a scanning problem on this post. If this doesn't resolve your issue, then I am going to recommend uninstalling the software. Please follow this HP document on Uninstalling the Printer Software.
Once this is complete, you can perform a clean boot on your computer. I will provide a Microsoft document here to help you. This helps eliminate software conflicts that occur when you install a program or an update or when you run a program. Now, you can install the full feature software from the HP website here.
Please post your results, as I will be looking forward to hearing from you. Have a great day!
I worked on behalf of HP.

Searchable PDFs are now more than 10 times as large

When I was using on Windows XP an older version (70.0.128.0) for creating searchable PDF files, the created files require less than 10% of the searchable PDF files created on Windows 7 64bit using new version (130.0.44.62).
Sample: 9 pages, black and white, pdf searchable
359 KB on Windows XP, 70.0.128.0
3847 KB on Windows 7 64bit, 130.0.44.62
Looking at the results, I do not notice any difference.
For all other files I notice a similar factor.
Anyone observing the same 'feature'?
What have I done wrong?
Best regards,
Wolfgang

You may have changed the settings file selection, maybe for the better. You may not have been embedding all of the fonts for instance and now you are. It may also be that you changed from printing to the Adobe PDF printer and started using PDF Maker that by default adds a lot of bloat to the PDF. That bloat can be useful, but not if you are worried about size.

Creating Searchable PDFs

Hello,
I am fairly new to Acrobat development and have a couple of questions that I would greatly appreciate help and direction on:
1) What is the best way to programmatically create a searchable PDF from a .doc, .xls, .ppt and various image formats e.g. tiff, jpeg, bmp, etc...
2) What is the best way to programmatically invoke the OCR capabilities of Acrobat SDK.
Any help and or direction here would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

Hello Malky,
Thanks for your response. Here are some answers to your questions:
1) To run on the server as a background process.
2) Yes, it will be automatic.
Here is what I want to do:
1) User uploads a file (.doc, .xls, .ppt or any image file type)
2) The system converts to a PDF which needs to be searchable.
3) I want include OCR support during the conversion if images exist.
Does that make sense? My questions are:
1) Whats the best way to convert into PDF for any the type? Is there any opensource solution to do this?
2) How can a make use of the OCR capabilities? How can I through the SDK?
Thank you very much!

HP LaserJet Pro MFP M521 and searchable PDF

Dear All, Does anyone know if the HP LaserJet Pro MFP M521 can scan to a searchable PDF(OCR)? I can't find that option anywhere (I read somewhere that this was a feature), would this be an optional component/license? Thanks in advance. Regards,Pardeep Saini

OCR is a proprietary function offered by some but not all HP products. The printer would need to be licensed in order to create an OCR from scratch if it cannot already do so. User Guide has a small section on the OCR capabilities of this printer on page 107:http://content.etilize.com/User-Manual/1024547645.pdf Work around would be to purchase Adobe OCR products and then republish the original PDFs with OCR.

Searchable PDF Unreadable...

I have created two versions of a PDF. One is a serachable PDF, using IRIS and the other is a standard PDF. Why is the searchable PDF unreadable in the AR IOS version? That is, why are the pages blank? I should mention the searchable PDF is readable in IOS Mai, Google Chrome, AiO Remote (HP app), and iBook. Just not AR IOS. Thanks...

Hi,
We can examine your PDF document to determine if Adobe Reader for iOS has a defect.
Would you share your PDF document with us? I have sent you the instructions on how to share your PDF document with us in a separate forum email.
Thank you!

How can I search for document content, specific words, in my scanned (and searchable) pdf files?

When using spotloght to search my files for text within a scanned document, I may or may not find documents that were scanned by a scan program (ScanSnap) to a searchable PDF file on a firewire attached drive.
Is there a specific manner that yeilds useable results 100% of the time?

Spotlight should index PDF files (as well as Word and some other kinds of files) but it seems that PDFs are not created equal. I've seen and heard complaints that some scanner/OCR programs are saving files that aren't searchable and yours is one of them. Try opening one of the files in Preview and resaving it.

Envy 4500 won't scan text to produce a searchable PDF file

I used to have a Photosmart 4400 C printer that would let me scan to produce searchable PDF files, i.e. I could select letters or words using a text selection tool in my PDF reader. Today I Just purchased a ENVY 4500 e- All-in-One-Series. It will only scan text to give me a graphic PDF file that is not searchable. I updated to the latest driver EN4500_198.exe but that doesn't help. Does anyone have a solution?

Hi, No, the Envy 4500 does not have any OCR software by default, you have to pay for that software and believe this or not, the software is more expensive than the printer itself. You can buy the software or you can try to use few free software around: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-ocr-software.htm Regards,

Searchable pdfs from old pdfs?

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