Why can't Adobe Reader find or search for words on a PDF document?

I have seen where people have the same problem whoes comments where dated back in June 2011.  WHEN WILL THIS PROBLEM BE FIXED?  I am sent PDF files with multiple pages of documents that I have to go through.  I need to find documents by employee names.  Please help.

Are you able to select the text? If not, then it's probably just a scanned image of text, not real text. In that case there's nothing you can do about it unless you run OCR on the document in Acrobat or some other similar application.

Similar Messages

  • Unable to search for words in a pdf document

    I am using Adobe Reader Ver 10.1.1 (All updates)
    I have a pdf document in which I am unable to search for words. No words in the document are found even though they do exist. If I copy a word from within the document and paste it into the search criteria then instead of getting the word that I copied, I get substitute characters and it can in fact find these characters as the word being searched.
    The document is a catalog and can be downloaded from the following URL.
    http://www.carbatec.com.au/getcatalogue?zenid=d1cuvbat0ois0g37r0r33vnah1
    I will appreciate any help as to why I cannot search for words in the document.

    Thank you Dave Merchant and try67 for your responses. As per my previous post, I contacted the company re the catalogue and they have responded favourably. I'll include their response because it gives the reason for the search failure as document compression which you might find interesting. I'll await their new catalogue and see if they have fixed the problem.
    Company response:
    Thank you very much for your input.  And yes, you are correct, the compression we used for the current catalogue's PDF format does strip out text included in the catalogue.  We used the compression settings we did with the intention of minimising download time, however I take your point about including text for search purposes (which I also utilise when I'm scanning through PDFs).
    We will actually be posting out our new catalogue next week and we'll release the new PDF version on the website at the same time.  I've asked our graphic designer to ensure that the PDF we use for the new catalogue includes searchable text.

  • Why Won't Adobe Reader Find Items in a Document That Are Clearly There?

    I performed a regular and advanced search of a document for words that I knew were there and Adobe Reader told me that they were not there. I was looking at one instance of the item that I searched for and Adobe Reader told me that it wasn't there but I was looking directly at one place where the words I am searching are located. Adobe Reader tells me that it is not in the document ANYWHERE, which is a lie because I can read and the words for which I searched are there at least once but Adobe Reader tells me that the words for which I am searching are not in the document at all. This isn't the first time that this exact thing has happened to me with Adobe Reader, I am simply tired of taking extra time out of my day to search a document manually when there are supposed to be tools to do that for me. Sorry for repeating my problem twice but I am frustrated and I want to make myself ABUNDANTLY clear. Can anyone help me?

    It all depends on how the PDF was created. One reason text isn't found is because there isn't any text, just an image of text. This will happen with a scanned document that hasn't been OCRed. Another reason is when a font's Unicode mapping table in the PDF are missing or corrupted, which breaks the link between a glyph and its corresponding character code. In short, there is no association between a glyph that looks like an "A" with the letter "A" that you type. If you could post a link to a sample document, we could tell for sure what the problem is.

  • Why can't adobe reader remember my page?

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    (for the record)
    This is a known issue with the Adobe Reader plugin on Mac OS:
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    i downloaded adobe reader and when I try to display something I get an error message:
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    I was able to display these documents with preview..
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    (for the record)
    This is a known issue with the Adobe Reader plugin on Mac OS:
    *[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=811085 Bug 811085] - Can't use Adobe Reader for PDF files
    Read the above bug for details (please don't comment in the bug report).
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    *[[How to disable the built-in PDF viewer and use another viewer]]
    *[[View PDF files in Firefox without downloading them]]

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    Moving to Reader forums.

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    When form is opened using Adobe Reader, links do not work.  However, if opened using Acrobat XI Pro, the links work fine.
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  • I downloaded Adobe Reader but when I try to open a pdf document, I'm directed to download Adobe Reader, which I did over and over again. What should I do now?

    I'm having difficulty viewing pdf documents because I'm required to download Adobe Reader.  I did download that application, but the same message recurs repeatedly.  What shall I do to resolve the problem?

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  • Using Oracle Text to search through WORD, EXCEL and PDF documents

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    FROM db_docs
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  • Using adobe reader SDK to search in PDF

    Hi,
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    Thanks very much.

    >i tried to download the sdk, but the problem is that all the search samples needs the acrobat standard or professional.
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    >
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    >
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