(Archived) Best way to make my PDFs searchable?

[DavidR 5]

I am a long-time Evernote Premium user (1,700 notes) and happy ScanSnap owner (S1300). Sometime in the last few months, I upgraded my ScanSnap Manager software to Version 3.2 L20. In this version, I now have the option, when scanning to PDF, to "Convert to Searchable PDF". (I don't remember having that option before.

This functionality seems to overlap with EN's ability to make my PDFs searchable.

So the question is: What is the best way to make my PDFs as searchable as possible within EN? Should I:

1) Turn off the "Convert to Searchable PDF" in my local software, and let the magic happen in the EN cloud?

or

2) Turn on the "Convert to Searchable PDF" in my local software, and provide some help to the EN cloud? Or is it any help at all? Does EN pay attention to whether a PDF is searchable or not?

Does anyone have any wisdom on this?

Gracias!

[Lew 0]

I allow ScanSnap to make all scans I send to Evernote searchable. Although I do sync a number of my notebooks to EN, there are a number that I do not due to their sensitive content. Though I don't sync those notebook, I do want them to be searchable.

Syncing already OCRed PDFs to EN does't seem to have any negative effect on their searchability in my experience.

Scanned documents I send to email or my printer are not OCRed.

Lew

[jmpsfs 23]

I have tried it both ways and decided the longer scan time involved in doing the OCR locally wasn't worth it, and that was before Evernote upgraded its search function to show the specific location of a search term within a PDF. It's a question of taste, I think.

[jbenson2 2,146]

I have tried it both ways and decided the longer scan time involved in doing the OCR locally wasn't worth it, and that was before Evernote upgraded its search function to show the specific location of a search term within a PDF. It's a question of taste, I think.

Not a big deal, but...

Just keep in mind the PDF indexed by Evernote can only be searched when it is part of Evernote.

If you remove the PDF from Evernote, it will no longer be searchable.

A PDF that ScanSnap OCRs will retain its search abilities, wherever it ends up.

[jmpsfs 23]

Evernote and the 9,000 notes I have in it are so much a part of my everyday life that I can't recall the last time I've used a PDF anywhere else. I suppose in that case I'd just run it through Acrobat's OCR. It would be much faster to do that for the one out of a hundred than waiting for Fujitsu to OCR every PDF I scan.

At this point, all my scans go directly into ScanDrop, where I can rearrange or delete pages as necessary, rotate the ones that came out pointed the wrong way, and assign the notebook and any tags I need, then add a note that may help me find it later. ScanDrop uploads it directly to Evernote and the job's done, other than the server-side OCR Evernote provides.

As I said, though, to each his own.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Syncing already OCRed PDFs to EN does't seem to have any negative effect on their searchability in my experience.

Just FYI, if it's already OCR'd, Evernote does not OCR it again:

viewtopic.php?f=56&t=22117&p=95112&hilit=pdf+100+pages#p95112

[jbenson2 2,146]

Evernote and the 9,000 notes I have in it are so much a part of my everyday life that I can't recall the last time I've used a PDF anywhere else.

I am in the same situation.

Over the past 3 years, I cannot recall an instance where I had to extract a PDF from Evernote.