Adobe Search Question

[Shlomo Perets]

Martin,

You wrote:

 > I have a co-worker who is having difficulty searching for words in an
 > Adobe Acrobat PDF document. Sometimes he sees the word, and it doesn't
 > come up in the text. Sometimes he doesn't get all instances of the
 > word.

 > He's running 6.0 and I'm using 7.0. Before I advise him on how to fix
 > that, are there any changes between the two versions in terms of
 > search capability I should be aware of?

I don't know of specific differences between Acrobat 6 and 7 related to 
non-searchable text.

With all versions of Acrobat, some of the text may not be consistently 
located by the Find or Search functions.  Reasons for search-related 
problems include:
* incorrect PS driver output or settings
* font issues (Type 3 fonts, OpenType special features, corrupt font data)
* character spacing
* issues with specific authoring applications
* built-in limitations (eg phrase split across page boundaries)

Try copying the text you see in Acrobat/Reader and pasting it in a text 
editor (or save as RTF and open in Word); then inspect the text in the text 
editor (this should give some idea as to what is stored internally in Acrobat).


Shlomo Perets

MicroType, http://www.microtype.com
Training, consulting & add-ons: FrameMaker, Structured FM and Acrobat