Searching 'All Notes' for text in PDF attachments

[PeacockEd 1]

I am a new user of Evernote and I tried to pair the app with Scannable. I ditched Scannable because it didn't seem to have OCR capability - so I am now adding my scanned documents to Evernote via Adobe Scan. Adobe Scan does have OCR and I can select/copy the worded text inside of my PDF's within my notes inside Evernote.

I am trying to perform a Search from the iOS app - namely the 'All Notes' Search from the main screen. Despite following the Evernote instructions, I am not able to search for text within my attached PDF's. I don't get any hits whatsoever. However if I open a Note containing my PDF, open the attached PDF and search within the PDF for the text - the search returns numerous results for that search term.

What am I doing wrong? Why doesn't the search seem to be searching 'All Notes' like it is supposed to do?

Thank you!

 

[DTLow 5,737]

50 minutes ago, PeacockEd said:

Why doesn't the search seem to be searching 'All Notes' like it is supposed to do?

A paid account feature?

Confirmed; the Scanable app does not created searchable pdfs

[gazumped 11,709]

If a searchable PDF is attached to a note,  it's my understanding that the index of that PDF becomes searchable in Evernote - though I don't think Evernote have commented one way or another on that.  I don't quite understand why Scannable didn't work - that also (I think) creates searchable PDF files.  Have these notes been synced to Evernote's server?  It may just be that purely local notes are not (yet) searchable.  Maybe.

[PeacockEd 1]

The Evernote documentation states that the PDF will become indexed/searchable after approximately 4 hours. I added my PDF's days ago and I have been checking to see if they can be searched, but it never becomes available. The documentation also doesn't state if this is a paid or free feature - which I find frustrating. The docs define this as a fully supported feature, but apparently there are details missing and I cannot seem to find the info I need (i.e. is this a paid only feature, etc).

Scannable did not work due to the fact that the documents it scanned/saved (even as a PDF) did not contain text that was able to be selected/searched - meaning it does not have OCR capability. The docs state that in order to be searchable the final PDF must contain text that can be selected/searched. Unfortunately Scannable was a fail in this department.

[DTLow 5,737]

Evernote's OCR process is a paid account feature

Confirmed, Scanable does not include an OCR process.

[PeacockEd 1]

The promotional material and documentation for Evernote and Scannable leads one to believe that the apps can be paired together in order to create Notes that contain fully searchable PDF's. Even still I am now using another app (Adobe Scan) to create PDF docs with OCR. The Evernote documentation again leads one to believe that searching within these Notes with attached PDF's is a feature. I just wish I could get a definitive answer.

[s2sailor 2,255]

What happens if you try to search using a different client?  I'm just wondering if the problem is iOS only or not.

[DTLow 5,737]

5 minutes ago, PeacockEd said:

I just wish I could get a definitive answer.

See https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005157-Compare-Evernote-subscription-plans

[PeacockEd 1]

2 minutes ago, DTLow said:

See https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005157-Compare-Evernote-subscription-plans

Thank you DTLow. I'm a bit frustrated as I had thought this was one of the Free features, but happy to now know what the problem is.

[s2sailor 2,255]

8 minutes ago, DTLow said:

See https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005157-Compare-Evernote-subscription-plans

That article still seems confusing to me.  It could be just referring to server side OCR.  Like @gazumped I thought if you OCR'd external to Evernote, it would still search as long as an index was present but I've never confirmed.

[DTLow 5,737]

12 hours ago, s2sailor said:

Like @gazumped I thought if you OCR'd external to Evernote, it would still search as long as an index was present but I've never confirmed.

This discussion is specific to IOS.
Using my test Basic account, OCR'd pdfs are searchable on my Mac but not on IOS

[PeacockEd 1]

There is also this which I found linked from the Plans/FAQ's link from above. I am assuming this refers to all platforms - and not just iOS?

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005867-FAQ-about-Evernote-subscription-plans

[CalS 5,282]

11 hours ago, PeacockEd said:

so I am now adding my scanned documents to Evernote via Adobe Scan. Adobe Scan does have OCR and I can select/copy the worded text inside of my PDF's within my notes inside Evernote.

PDFs you OCR yourself should be searchable, no matter the membership level.  Can you perform the same search using a desktop version of EN?  I found that the server based OCR from EN does not perform the task as well as the OCR software I use on my desktop.  Found this when I was looking for a receipt from a specific merchant.  Could not find the note via IOS or the web, could find the note with the PC app.  It was a receipt created via a ScanSnap scanner letting the scanner provided software doing the scanning. 

I submitted a ticket and the problem was verified, something to do with the server OCR engine not recognizing the font correctly and thereby getting the width wrong.  Whatever, doesn't work right is my view.  Haven't heard of a solution, submitted the ticket last August.  Just did a like search for our local hardware store, 426 notes on my PC, 353 on the web and IOS.  The search includes resource:application/pdf so it's only PDFs in the search group for only synced notebooks.  So give a go on a desktop app if you can to see if you can find the notes.

[PeacockEd 1]

I installed the Desktop version of EN and can confirm that I am able to search within all notes in my account for text appearing in any/all of my attached PDF's. Does this confirm that the iOS version has a bug or a feature limit in the Free version? I don't think I am able to submit a ticket as a non-premium member so I am not sure what I can do next.

Thank you for all of your help!

[DTLow 5,737]

11 minutes ago, PeacockEd said:

Does this confirm that the iOS version has a bug or a feature limit in the Free version?

This confirms the IOS system itself has limitations; it's not necessarily an Evernote bug.

[CalS 5,282]

On 2/12/2019 at 9:08 AM, PeacockEd said:

I installed the Desktop version of EN and can confirm that I am able to search within all notes in my account for text appearing in any/all of my attached PDF's. Does this confirm that the iOS version has a bug or a feature limit in the Free version? I don't think I am able to submit a ticket as a non-premium member so I am not sure what I can do next.

Thank you for all of your help!

Yeah it's a bug, but it is a bug with the OCR process EN uses.  Per my above post the OCR process at the servers is not recognizing the font correctly so the OCR is not always right.  If you are searching for word try searching for "w o r d" on IOS, you may find some of the "missing" notes.

[PinkElephant 8,193]

Going back to the start of this thread: I understood that the PDFs were created and OCRed outside of EN and loaded already as searchable files. For me this means that they carry all the text information for the search in the file before it hits an EN server.

Then the searchability of these PDFs should not depend on whatever bug there may be in the iOSVersion. If I initiate a search with the iOS app, it delivers results for the whole database, not only the tiny part that was downloaded locally before. So search at least for a mobile app is a server job that delivers a search result to the local client.

Second questions: The OCR is done after uploading a file on the EN servers, right ? So a bug may affect files created through Scannable out of an interaction with the scanning. But those created by third party scanners on the i-gadget, that were then loaded via the iOS-EN-App into the cloud, should not be affected ! Right ? And this should not depend on whether these files were made searchable by local OCR before uploading, if there is a paid EN account to handle the OCRing.

At least this is my understanding. I think I will later run some trial searches on iOS and Windows to see if I get differing hits depending on the client used.

Third question (going deep into the backend): Will EN do a second OCR-pass on pdf-files that already come with text / OCR-information ?

[CalS 5,282]

3 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

For me this means that they carry all the text information for the search in the file before it hits an EN server.

EN OCRs the PDFs on the server.  That OCR on the server doesn't always match the OCR on the desktop, in my experience.  Nor does it download the OCR to the desktop if the document is already OCRd on the desktop.  Again, based upon the search results I get.  I trust the desktop OCR at this point.  I get the fullest search results there.

[PinkElephant 8,193]

And I do not trust the OCR of my third party scanning app too much. It is quite sensitive to fonts etc.

My feeling is that the OCR that came with my ix500 ScanSnap is pretty good, because I get search hits even on the fine print that comes with business stationery. And this often is very small Print in light colors like grey or blue. Good to know that these results will not be modified later on.

[CalS 5,282]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

And I do not trust the OCR of my third party scanning app too much. It is quite sensitive to fonts etc.

My feeling is that the OCR that came with my ix500 ScanSnap is pretty good, because I get search hits even on the fine print that comes with business stationery. And this often is very small Print in light colors like grey or blue. Good to know that these results will not be modified later on.

I use the OCR process that came with the ScanSnap s1300i, OCR as I scan.  Seems to work well.  I use Adobe if I need to redo or OCR something I've downloaded which didn't come that way.