Adobe Acrobat XI - Manual (Page 486)

479
Last updated 1/14/2015
Chapter 13: Searching and indexing
Searching PDFs
You have lots of control and lots of possibilities for running effective and efficient searches in Adobe Acrobat XI. A
search can be broad or narrow, including many different kinds of data and covering multiple Adobe PDFs.
If you work with large numbers of related PDFs, you can define them as a catalog in Acrobat Pro, which generates a
PDF index for the PDFs. Searching the PDF index—instead of the PDFs themselves—dramatically speeds up searches.
See
Creating PDF indexes .
Search and replace features overview
You run searches to find specific items in PDFs. You can run a simple search, looking for a search term within in a single
file, or you can run a more complex search, looking for various kinds of data in one or more PDFs. You can selectively
replace text.
You can run a search using either the Search window or the Find toolbar. In either case, Acrobat searches the PDF body
text, layers, form fields, and digital signatures. You can also include bookmarks and comments in the search. Only the
Find toolbar includes a Replace With option.
The Search window offers more options and more kinds of searches than the Find toolbar. When you use the Search
window, object data and image XIF (extended image file format) metadata are also searched. For searches across
multiple PDFs, Acrobat also looks at document properties and XMP metadata, and it searches indexed structure tags
when searching a PDF index. If some of the PDFs you search have attached PDFs, you can include the attachments in
the search.
Note: PDFs can have multiple layers. If the search results include an occurrence on a hidden layer, selecting that occurrence
displays an alert that asks if you want to make that layer visible.
Access the search features
Where you start your search depends on the type of search you want to run. Use the Find toolbar for a quick search of
the current PDF and to replace text. Use the Search window to look for words or document properties across multiple
PDFs, use advanced search options, and search PDF indexes.
Display the Find toolbar
❖ Open it by choosing Edit > Find (Ctrl/Command+F).