How can I search for a word in a pdf document 1

[niallo32]

I have Acrobat Reader 7.0 and I am scanning a batch of documents to a TFF file and then converting them to a pdf using Acrobat Writer.

I open the file using Acrobat Reader and try to search for any example of a word that occurs, but it searches through the document without finding it - even though I can clearly see the word.

I can search for any word in any other pdf documents (that werent created by Acrobat Writer) without problem.

Am I missing a setting or anything?

Thanks

 

[jmgalvin]

Because you're scanning, you're creating a graphic - a picture. The tiff is only a picture of the text which Acrobat cannot read. Acrobat requires actual text to be able to search for a word.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[niallo32]

Thats makes sense alright.

I need to scan batches of Financial documents - invoices etc into a single pdf - for example - all January 2003 invoices into a single pdf file and then be able to retrieve a particular invoice if it were ever required by an audit.

Would you know of any scanning software that allows me to scan as a text file and I could then convert to a pdf?

Apologies if this is off topic.

Thanks

 

[jmgalvin]

WE use HP scanners and all have OCR (optical character recognition). That changes the "picture" to text. HOWEVER, I've always found OCR to be weak - meaining it misses things - especially with smaller sized type. We never use it.

If you want to try, look at the software for your scanner and see if it has OCR. If it has it and you want to try, make sure that you use a VERY high resolution for the scan.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[KennyRohan]

In the past, I used a software package called "FaxSTF" ... don't even know if they are around any more. They had a feature whereby after a scan you could click on "recognize as text" and it would convert the item to editable and searchable text. I would then save the document as .txt and bring in to whatever program I used to process the text file. There may be other scan-software companies that have this feature. It was cumbersome, but very useful in some cases, such as yours. Good luck.

 

[niallo32]

Thanks for all the replies

 

[rickscript]

Adobe Acrobat 7 also has the "recognize as text" function, which can be done after a scan of a document into a .tiff (or other image file). It does a reasonably good job but certainly is not perfect. Scanner software with OCR is also a mixed bag but I have pretty good luck with my Microtek 6000 scanner and it's pi finereader OCR plug-in. It gets over 99% accuracy on my scans of Sports Illustrated magazines and they are thus fully searchable.