PDF's are NOT searchable in V10 but 100% in Legacy

[Carl-L-ND 56]

 

 

I am having a similar problem since upgrading to V10 (EN Personal) from Legacy ( EN Premium) as found in this previous post.

 

 

 

All my PDF's are from file folders that have remained in the same structure as the day they were dragged and dropped from File Manager into a Legacy Evernote note.  I'm doing the same with notes since upgrading to V10.  FYI, latest Windows 10 on a 6 month old laptop.

I went thru this check list mentioned above and nothing there seems in conflict to my experience.

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208313388

 

With V10, it will find any text in the note & title but often dozens of PDF's with a copy-able text string cannot be found.  Many of these are PDF's from before I upgraded and since I upgraded. If I then switch over to Legacy EN, ALL PDF's are searchable and the dozens of missing notes are found. What is strange is that these are quotes for materials given to clients. 

 

My problem comes up when I select a part number from the main body of the quotation - an area of columns & rows.  If I select another portion of the document with copy-able text, such as a field title, it finds all the notes in the notebook with that text string. 

Also, when I open EN in a browser and try the same search, it also does not work.

Neither does this search work in the mobile Android app.

I use this functionality every single day, 99% of the time on the desktop and on occasion when I'm away from the office while on a client call. 

Why is Legacy fully functional and the new V10 Evernote, NOT ?

 

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[PinkElephant 8,174]

This is how it works in the Mac version of v10 - I assume it works the same in the Windows version:

Open the note with the pdf. Select the pdf, choose "Show all pages". Go to the 3 dots menu, select "Search in note ...". A dialogue box will show, where you enter the searched string. Below it are arrows. It will tell how often the string was found, and by hitting the arrows, you jump to the position of the findings.

If it is inside of the pdf, it will go to the page. Sometimes the place where it found it is a little below the bottom edge of the screen, so scroll a little. The search highlights the position of the string in the pdf (which can be a little off, because it will have a position on the page remembered).

And I agree - this is not properly documented.

On mobile, you open the pdf to view it, and hit the magnifying glass. you enter the search string. You get thumbnails of the page on which it was found, and beside it a short text from the document with the searched string highlighted. By tapping on one of the findings, you jump to that position. The highlighting will still be there, so it is easy to find the text.

In general it is more complex to find a text in a note that holds several pdfs, if that text is hidden in one of the pdfs.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,977]

14 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Open the note with the pdf. Select the pdf, choose "Show all pages". Go to the 3 dots menu, select "Search in note ...".

I find that this works even if I choose "View as Single Page." In fact, it seems to highlight the search results better that way. In any case, the main thing is that it will not search PDFs displayed as attachments only.

[Carl-L-ND 56]

I think I may not be explaining this clearly enough.

I don't want to search a single PDF.  I want to search multiple notes, many having a PDF dropped into them.

Under Legacy EN we had the ability to search an entire NOTEBOOK of notes with PDF's dropped into them or using "NOTES" for all notes, search every single note (1000's of them) and be able to find text from within multiple PDF's dropped into various notes is multiple Notebooks.  Every PDF had its' internal text indexed just like the text content of the note itself.  It worked flawlessly for years for me.

That is what I have here.  Several years worth of notes with embedded (dropped) PDF's in several notebooks.   I would select/open a notebook and then using the Search field, key in text and find that text ANYWHERE in a PDF and in multiple notes.  I might have 1000 notes in a notebook and be able to pull out 15 with the particular information from within the main body of the PDF ONLY.  Not from any other text anywhere else in the note, just in the PDF and in the centre portion of the PDF.

I DID NOT have to click on a SINGLE PDF to search it.  I simply had to open a NOTEBOOK and use the Search function for the entire Notebook.

That functionality appears to be corrupted or missing in the new V10.  I can not find any text from within the main body of these notes.

Yet I can create a note with V10, drop a PDF into it, and then within seconds open Legacy EN and find this new note and several other notes with the same info.  V10 finds NOTHING.

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So..... refining the issue a bit more.  This applies to data/text strings within the body of the PDF, not text elsewhere in the note.

I have an obscure part number that looks like this....  AAA-NNNNNNN-NNNA   i.e. XYZ-1234567-123M

I can search for the entire XYZ-1234567-123M part number and Legacy will find it.

V10 fails completely with this string.  But if I only use the middle numerical portion "1234567" it will find all 4 notes that have this string of text in an instant, out of about 6000 notes .

OR I can search on an extremely common part number that looks like AANNNAAAANAA.  In Legacy, as I expand text string, I can see the found notes shrinking in real time, no waiting.

AA finds 2000 notes
AANNN finds 200 notes
AANNNAAAA finds 150 notes

etc etc

In V10..... NOTHING.

I have had this functionality with my Legacy PREMIUM account since 2013'ish.

Has this ability to index and search PDF's been removed from V10 PERSONAL and is only a function of V10 PROFESSIONAL ????


.

 

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[Jon/t 1,319]

Works for me on Windows. I search all notes for "walking" and it finds all my walking routes, some with PDFs and even highlights the word "walking" within the PDF.

Not sure if this is a paid feature.

It may need a PDF to be actual text rather than saved as an image. Doesn't work for image based PDFs for me.

You on the latest version?

[PinkElephant 8,174]

@Carl-L-ND You were clear enough, and I presumed you have no issues finding the notes containing the text - be it in the notes title or body, be it in an attachment. OCR of pdfs is a subscription feature, starting with legacy Premium (not Plus).

Finding the notes works for me,  no problems. If it doesn’t work for you, contact support. Especially because you say you have similar problems with web no mobile - both use the server index.

[Carl-L-ND 56]

Ticket has been submitted.

 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,977]

I agree that this seems like a case for support, since you can provide highly specific variables. I find that in v. 10, from the Home page or Notes view, if I search for a word that I know occurs in a PDF in a particular note (but not in the note text), the search will find that note, but will not locate the instance in the PDF if the PDF is set to view as attachment. If it set to view as single page (it doesn't work as well for me with view multiple pp.), I just have to click in the note and hit Ctrl+F there, and then the first instance in the PDF is highlighted. I'm on a Professional subscription, but it should work the same on Personal.

In legacy Evernote 6, it finds the notes that have instances in the PDF, but again displays the results in the PDF only if I have set the Options to NOT view all PDFs as attachments. That option is no longer available in v. 10 (a shame), and I wonder if that's partly the problem.

[Carl-L-ND 56]

I've had two responses from EN since I submitted the ticket.  I guess Tier1 and then Tier2.  I think that is a quick response and deserves to be noted.

They were able to reproduce the issue I am having and I have been advised it is a problem at EN's end that needs to be debugged.  As expected, there is no way to give a firm date on when it will be resolved but I am happy enough to keep using Legacy EN, when working in my home office,  to pull up data while resolving client inquiries.

I'll also be doing a little extra work of manually copy & pasting  part numbers as text into the notes as a work around for future notes and I will have to go back a few months in old notes to do the same for specific clients prior to road trips when I'm visiting their locations.

For me it is all about what I can find and access quickly on my phone when on site, often in locations without a cell signal or WiFi.

.

[Meandering muse 3]

Has this issue been resolved yet Carl?  I am worried, since we are losing legacy....

[PinkElephant 8,174]

It does search, it does find, and it does list the notes where it found.

To see what was found exactly in the pdf you need to go to the note, and use the „in note search“ or even the „in document search“.

[Carl-L-ND 56]

4 hours ago, Meandering muse said:

Has this issue been resolved yet Carl?  I am worried, since we are losing legacy....

@Meandering muse  No and Yes.

Since my last posting I went through 1700+ PDF's I had dropped into a separate note for each, and:

• opened each one into Adobe Acrobat,
• selected the portion of the PDF that was not getting picked up by Evernote which was essentially all of the middle portion of the PDF
• pasting as text these contents into the same note as the PDF.

I've also been doing this for all similar PDF's newly created  since I identified the issue.

Just a reminder, this was a bonafide issue that I submitted to Evernote Support that they acknowledged with a support ticket.

I not familiar with the coding internal to a PDF document but something in the PDF's, created by the company I work for,  was not being picked up when Evernote assimilated the document.

These were all quote and/or order acknowledgements with part numbers.  There would be multiple line items in the body of the PDF.  The ability to track part numbers was what I wanted.  The line in the PDF with the  part number was not being picked up.

i.e.

Upper body of PDF had client info, ship to address, terms, etc and my company's logo and info, all of which gets scanned and picked up.

A graphics strip spanning width of page to separate above and main body below.

1  AAA-NNNNNNN-NNNNA    <<< Part number
    A cryptic description of the item is in this line.
    More description.
    Sometimes a s 3rd line with info.

2  AAA-NNNNNNN-NNNNA    <<< next part number in order
    A cryptic description of the item is in this line.
    More description.
    Sometimes a s 3rd line with info.

3 AAA-NNNNNNN-NNNNA    <<< next part number in order

and on and on for as many items as in order, sometimes spanning 3 pages.

A graphics strip spanning width of page to separate body above from a summary statement

It was the information in the line with the "1 AAA-NNNNNNN-NNNNA" that was not getting picked up.

 

@Meandering muse seeing your inquiry today I went back a couple of years and found a PDF that had never been dropped in a note and created  a new note for it. This was a bare PDF in an EN note, I did NOT add in the body pasted as text.

I allowed a minute for Evernote to assimilate it.

Using the Windows app, I then clicked on Notes in the left hand menu and in the Search field above it pasted in the completer AAA-NNNNNNN-NNNNA part number.

The new note was NOT found. 

But... I had already stumbled over this a few weeks ago, the "-" hyphen in the part number can cause problems in search.  I then brought up all notes again and in the search field pasted only  "NNNNNNN-NNNNA" removing the "AAA-" prefix.

Now the new note is found per the part number in the body of the dropped in PDF.

Similarly, another line of products have part numbers per this format  AAA-NNNN.

Again, searching on the "AAA-NNNN" will not find the new note.  But If I remove the "AAA-" and search only on the last "NNNN" it will.

I'm not sure why the alphabetic prefix in the part number is preventing it from being found.  I did try quotation marks around the entire part number i.e. "AAA-NNNNNNN-NNNNA" but that did not help.

But now, versus many months ago, I can search on the last portion of the part numbers and find those PDF's.  Its' possible this was the case when I originally obtained my support ticket but I think at the time I would have tried this variation.   In any case, by copying and pasting as text, I can find the entire string.

 

A couple of noted items with the migration to the new version.

1. With the old v6 system, if I dropped the PDF into a note and then went to open the note in Acrobat using mouse over PDF right click "Open", sometimes the old system would refuse to open the PDF.  I would do this in order to copy and paste the part numbers as text.  It happened routinely and I had a work around for it but it was wasted time.  Now with v10, it has been 100% reliable. Two thumbs up!! 👍👍
2. When you search in ALL Notes, and it brings up multiple responses in search results, it allows you to sort these by  the Updated and Created columns. NOT by Location or Title columns.  Two Thumbs Down !!!  Booo Hisss!  👎👎
3. I preferred the older v6 search system where you brought up a notebook and it would only search in that notebook versus now having to use the "Stack" prefix but using "Stack" is a functional solution though a few more mouse swipes and clicks.

I've had to make small adjustments in my daily work flow with v10 but overall I find it more reliable in ensuring my notes are in my phone when I'm in the field.  I have not seen a that old issue with duplicate notes from an un-synced edit in a long long time.

Carl

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jon/t 1,319]

Just wondering is the text being highlighted when its text in a PDF or image in a PDF... either or both?

[Carl-L-ND 56]

1 hour ago, Jon/t said:

Just wondering is the text being highlighted when its text in a PDF or image in a PDF... either or both?

 

I can't speak to what happens with images in a PDF that is dropped into an EN note.  Have not tested this nor is it common in my workflow to have an image in a PDF that gets dropped into an EN note.

When I search, using a modified string where the problematic prefix is removed,  and my TEST note created just today is one of several notes found, it is the modified string in the body of the PDF that is highlighted. 

That modified string is also highlighted wherever it is found in my older notes, both in the PDF body and the bare text I copy & paste into the EN note after the PDF is dropped in.

I don't recall in the past, last  checked several months ago, that the text in the body of the PDF was highlighted.  I think this is new.  Previous in v10 it would have been only the text I added that was highlighted.

The reason I went thru and edited ~2000 notes to copy & paste from the Acrobat view of the PDF was to obtain the part number string.  When I had this problem way back when, I was not able to find notes using any part of the part number using v10 search.   Did I test at the time dropping just the prefix?  I can't recall for sure.  I'm positive I would have tried searching the NNNNNNN portion of the part numbers as that is unique to a custom product being built for clients.  

[Jon/t 1,319]

15 minutes ago, Carl-L-ND said:

That modified string is also highlighted wherever it is found in my older notes, both in the PDF body and the bare text I copy & paste into the EN note after the PDF is dropped in.

Not sure if I totally understand but I have a grid/chart PDF in my backpacking notebook and just searched for the number 24 which appears in the grid. Its a walking distane calculator. It found all instances OK.

Is this a similar situation?

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,977]

7 hours ago, Meandering muse said:

Has this issue been resolved yet Carl?  I am worried, since we are losing legacy....

Carl has some very specific points to his use case, which might not apply to everyone. In my experience, v. 10 finds notes with PDFs containing text I've searched for in the main search bar. To find the text in the PDFs within those notes, if the PDFs are more than a page or two, I go to a note, make its PDF(s) viewable as single or all pages, not just title (my default view), and then use the search function within the note. The search term will be highlighted in the PDF.

I'd suggest trying it out for yourself using the Web client, which will be the latest version of v. 10 (https://www.evernote.com/client/web). Search for text you know is in a PDF in a particular note, and see if the note is found, etc.

[Carl-L-ND 56]

1 hour ago, Jon/t said:

Not sure if I totally understand but I have a grid/chart PDF in my backpacking notebook and just searched for the number 24 which appears in the grid. Its a walking distane calculator. It found all instances OK.

Is this a similar situation?

No, it's not.

[Carl-L-ND 56]

53 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Carl has some very specific points to his use case, which might not apply to everyone. In my experience, v. 10 finds notes with PDFs containing text I've searched for in the main search bar. To find the text in the PDFs within those notes, if the PDFs are more than a page or two, I go to a note, make its PDF(s) viewable as single or all pages, not just title (my default view), and then use the search function within the note. The search term will be highlighted in the PDF.

I'd suggest trying it out for yourself using the Web client, which will be the latest version of v. 10 (https://www.evernote.com/client/web). Search for text you know is in a PDF in a particular note, and see if the note is found, etc.

 

To be clear, every other instance of text in the PDF document is found.

It is only this one line with the part number string that does not get picked up in v10 as in was in v6.

It has something to do with the formatting within the PDF document which apparently is somewhat obscure and created by some kind of auto script by my corporate resources. 

I mostly use EN with the SideList view mode, thereby having 3 vertical sections across screen. Left - the EN menu, centre the found Notes, and right a view of the note I've selected.  I can usually tell from the Title of the note which note I'm looking for but as Dave discusses, I can click in the note view and then CTRL F to search for a word if it is something particular.  I usually can find work related stuff quite quickly but my personal interest stuff.... ugh!  It's why I have notebooks set up to hold notes on the specific interests.