Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional - Manual (Page 560)

Preparing documents for indexing
Begin by creating a folder to contain the Adobe PDF files you want to index. When you
run the Catalog feature, it generates the index definition file (which has a .pdx extension)
and a support folder that is nested in the folder with the documents. The support folder
contains files that are generated automatically during the indexing process. The support
folder has the same name as the .pdx file.
If you move or delete a document from its folder, the document is still included in the
search, but when you try to open it, a message may notify you that the document cannot
be found. If you add, move, or delete a document from an indexed folder, make sure that
you rebuild or update the index. (See
Updating, rebuilding, and purging existing indexes .)
To prepare documents for indexing:
1. Move or copy all the Adobe PDF documents you want to index into a new folder.
Note: The structure may include subfolders with files that you don't want indexed. You
can exclude the entire contents of those subfolders from the indexing process--it is not
necessary to remove them. (See
Creating a search index .)
2. Rename the Adobe PDF documents, if necessary. (See Guidelines for cross-platform
indexing compatibility .)
3. Add information to the document properties for each file. (See Adding searchable
information to document properties .)
You can place Readme files that describe the index in the same folders with the
indexes. Or, you can place the Readme files in a central location so that users can easily
find descriptions for all indexes without having to know where the indexes themselves are
located.
The following guidelines are important, recommended practices for indexing:
●
Make sure that your documents are complete in content and electronic features, such as
links, bookmarks, and form fields, before you use the Catalog feature to index them.
●
Consider creating a separate Adobe PDF file for each chapter or section of a long
document. When you separate a document into parts, search performance improves and
you get results faster.
●
Add appropriate information in the document properties for the documents. This makes
the search faster. You can also create information files that users may find helpful. (See
Adding searchable information to document properties .)
●
Name your documents and indexes correctly for the platforms users may use. (See
Guidelines for cross-platform indexing compatibility .)
●
If the files to be indexed include scanned documents, make sure that the text is searchable.
(See
Converting image-only scanned pages to searchable text .)