Searching inside PDFs ... maybe even with spotlight?

Does anybody know of an application that lets me archive and search all my paper bound documents?
While there are some applications on Windows (such as ScanSnap) I've not seen anything on the Mac. The workflow I have in mind is to scan a document and then somehow being able to search for words in that document - but with no manual tagging - ideally with spotlight.
Any suggestions?

Thanks for your input so far. I realize that .pdfs are just images, so please let me elaborate.
In more technical terms, what I'm looking for is this:
A utility that scans to .pdf and then runs the document through its OCR engine. It then adds the full text of the .pdf to the file as spotlight comments. This would preserve the original layout and yet make its content searchable without manual tagging.

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why i cannot open a PDF file even with abobe 9

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Cannot search inside pdf with Windows Explorer

Win XP SP2
Scanned document that has been paper-captured using Acrobat 8.1.2.
I cannot use Windows Explorer to search for text inside this file. For example, I search for the word "abstract" (it's a technical paper) which DOES show up when doing a Ctrl-F find inside Acrobat, and I get no results in the search.
To test, I put one and only one file with that word in it in a new directory, then ran a standard search, using 'abstract' (without quotes) in the "A word or phrase in the file:" box.
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Someone tell me why this isn't working?

Since the search issue is coming up regularly, here is what I used some time back that helped me find a file I have lost a year earlier (OK, an organization problem on my part, but it is the question being asked). To search the interior of any file, not just the limited set of MS, follow the following directions (with warning) from Nick on Windows Vista Tips (for XP):
"Warning Serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly
by using Registry Editor or by using another method. These problems might
require that you reinstall your operating system. Microsoft cannot guarantee
that these problems can be solved. Modify the registry at your own risk.
Network administrators can configure this setting by modifying the registry.
To do this, set the FilterFilesWithUnknownExtensions DWORD value to 1 in the
following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\ContentIndex"
The original link is http://www.winvistatips.com/search-inside-bas-and-frm-files-t570174.html.
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Search inside PDFs

Hello everyone!
I have searched the forums to the answer for my question, but
I cant get a clear solution. I have a client who has us do small
interactive splash screen which we burn to a disc. Usually this
splash screens are one page with links that open PDF. Ok, pretty
simple. A while back they decided they didn't want to rely on the
user having PDF reader (even though it is free). So we got INM
Impressario for Director, and now we can view the PDFs inside
Director!!!!
Now they asked me if there is a way for the user to search
for information that is inside the individual PDFs...and I come to
you guys.
Is there a way that a user can search for specific
information inside a PDF. Our splash screen will always be on a CD
(or thumb drive). If the user types a word, can a list of the PDF
containing that information come up as a link which the user can
click and opens the PDF containing the information he searched for?
I am sure it involves an xtra...not sure which one.
Thanks!!!

I used it and it worked from basic searching. You don;t need
any
database knowledge to make it work. It is a little touchy
though, and
crashed a lot.
I did learn that it can not index a PDF that has NO text in
it. Some of
the ones that my client had were made from a bitmap per page,
with no
real text. You would expect that it would find no text and
simply not
index it, but instead, it would crash hard. You need to open
the PDF in
Acrobat and make a text field somewhere off the screen where
it can not
be seen and put some text in it (like the title/author of the
PDF), then
it would not crash.
And it will also crash if you are trying to index the PDFs by
their
metadata, if the metadata has certain characters. For
example, when you
are typing in Word, and you use quotes, it converts them to
"curly
quotes". If you copy/paste from Word into the metadata fields
for
author, title, etc, the indexer will crash. Of course my
client had
done just that.
Once the indexer does its thing and actually indexes
everything, things
went more smoothly. You must index the files before
distribution, and
you can not add new PDFs or change the existing ones unless
you re-index
the whole lot. That was a little annoying, but I understand
why it
would have to be that way.
I also had some trouble with the xtra crashing the projector
on Mac,
when it was running off non-writable media (like CD). I got
it to work
eventually, but it took a good bit of cursing and yelling
like an idiot.
Make sure you test everything as it will be delivered... that
is the
take away lesson here.
-Mike

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These are probably obvious question for longtime Mac users, but I come from the Windows world.

Activate the Finder's window. Put the folder name in the search field in the Finder's toolbar. Enter COMMAND-F which should change the Finder's window and give a toolbar above the column headers:
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This link helps too. You can do an Advanced search for any word in a document within a folder and save the results.
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Are the documents encrypted? If they are not, the common search engines (Google, etc) will normally index all the text in a PDF, the same as if it was a regular Web page. They don't index non-text media within a PDF (images, attachments, etc.) nor will they handle PDF Portfolios.

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Reproduce:
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Hi vmartin01,
I tried to check at my end and it works fine at my end.
Regards,
Ajlan Huda.

I have Adobe Reader XI with the package that allows me to send pdfs and convert pdfs to Word. When I open a pdf and try to search the search shows no matches even though the word I am searching for is in the document. Any suggestions how to search?

I have Adobe Reader XI with the package that allows me to send pdfs and convert pdfs to Word. When I open a pdf and try to search the search shows no matches even though the word I am searching for is in the document. Any suggestions how to search?

Once again, my thanks for your assistance. If I may impose on your generosity one more time, if I understand you correctly if I create a document on Word or WordPerfect, print it and scan it to create a pdf, the search function will not work. But, if I create the pdf document in Word the search function will work. Unfortunately, I am not sure how I create a pdf document in Word other than by printing it and scanning it. Could you please explain.
William B. Kohn, Esq.
General Counsel
Paul V. Profeta & Associates, Inc.
769 Northfield Avenue
Suite 250
West Orange, New Jersey 07052
(973) 325 - 1300
(973) 325 - 0376 (Facsimile)
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>

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Searching inside PDFs ... maybe even with spotlight?

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