Using Acrobat's Catalog (Index) function in a Browser environment

Question

Operating in a browser-based Microsoft Sharepoint Server environment, our shop accesses a number of large aircraft-related manuals that consist of multiple documents in Acrobat PDF format. We were stymied whenever we attempted to perform a full-search of the documents (cataloged via an index.pdx file)—the function simply did not work. Strangely, even though we linked the search function to the correct index file on the network server, Acrobat searched for a file on one's local drive.
The documentation for Acrobat 7.0/9.0 offers the following explanation:
"To search an Adobe PDF index, you must open Acrobat as a standalone application,not within your web browser." But this information was hardly encouraging since we had no intention of giving up the browser-based environment.
Our IT staff has discovered there is a way to work around this restriction. The trick is to access the index file using Windows file  protocol. This step in effect launches Acrobat as a standalone app within a browser environment. For example,
     1. Add a bookmark labeled "(FULL TEXT) SEARCH" to the document's main navigation window
     2. Edit the properties of the bookmark
         a. Set the Action to "Open a web link"
         b. Edit the URL to the fully-qualified address of the index file using the file protocol:  file://..../index.pdx
          NOTE: You have to use file protocol in order for the catalog function to work
     3. Save the main document to enable the modifed link
     4. Click the bookmark to launch the Search PDF window. The default Look In target now becomes the catalog file (index.pdx) of item 2b.

Answer 1

How do you access the generic PDF, directly or through an HTML page? It shouldn't make a difference. More importantly, does a user accessing this file have access to all the folders/files associated with the bookmark, that is, are they on the same server?
Each of the slash pairs is meaningful. The notation with four slashes file://// ... implies that the host computer and a portion of the path is already known or defined, which I suspect is probably not the case for you. For details of the file URL, see http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/fileurl.html. Attempting to access the index.pdx via http://... protocol does not work, as you point out, as it tries to locate the file in the temporary Interner folder on your local computer (as defined in the Internet Options dialog).
The following notation works in my environment:
file://z:\deptfolder\subfolder\subfolder\main_subfolder\pdf_subfolder\index.pdx (z: is a network drive)
file://hostname/deptfolder/subfolder/subfolder/main_subfolder/pdf_subfolder/index.pdx (hostname is our INTRANET server)
Added note: based on my reading of Acrobat 7.0/9.0 Help, the "Cannot find ..." error message indicates that the link relationship between the master file and the index has been broken.  An index assumes a relative path exists between the index definition file (PDX) and the folder containing the indexed documents. If this relative path remains unchanged, you don't have to do anything after moving the indexed document collection. However, if the relative path changes or the index resides on a drive or server distinct from any part of the collection, you will need to create and build the index in the same location as the collection.
Using Relative Addressing
The fact that the Catalog index function relies on relative addressing can simplify the task of maintaining links if the relationship between files remains unchanged in moving from one environment to another. For example,  given the following relationship
main_subfolder (menu file)
    pdf subfolder (PDF files)
        index subfolder (index definition file)
recreated in a browser environment, you can create the bookmark links in a menu file as:
    Action: Open a web link     ---->    ./pdf subfolder/filename.pdf  (open PDF document)      
    Action: Open a web link     ---->    ./pdf subfolder/index subfolder/index.pdx (open INDEX file)
in which the dot notation identifies (i.e., serves as a placeholder for) the path to the main_subfolder, The Open a web link function permits you to modify the contents of the URL. (Acrobat attempts to open each link using the file:// protocol.) For some reason, Acrobat may change the bookmark Action to "Execute a menu item" after you create and save it,  but this step does not change the funtionality of the bookmark.
Message was edited by: tarusbulba 3/18/2010