(Archived) Searching Text Added in Acrobat

[Mark JL 5]

Excuse me if this topic is covered elsewhere; I have not been able to find it.

 

I use PDF files created in Adobe Acrobat extensively both at work and personally. I will often use Acrobat's "Add Text Box" feature to create additional notes on those PDF files before I add them to Evernote. Unfortunately, once I do add the document to Evernote, I am finding that Evernote will not search for and find any text added using that feature of Acrobat. It will find original text in the PDF, but none of the additional notes.

 

I understand that Evernote does not OCR documents that already contain recognizable text, and for that reason I also run (or re-run, depending on the document) the Acrobat OCR feature AFTER adding the notes and BEFORE exporting to Evernote. I thought that doing so would make the added text searchable, and indeed it does do so within Acrobat: a search in Acrobat will successfully find the added notes. But even after doing the Acrobat OCR, Evernote will not search for and find anything in those added notes.

 

Does anyone out there know of a solution that will allow me to add such notes to a PDF file and make them searchable? I know that I could simply add notes to the Evernote note that contains the PDF, but I need to put the notes directly into the PDF for other purposes and would love to be able to find the documents by searching for them.

 

Thanks,

Mark

[gazumped 11,664]

Editing PDFs across all clients is a thorny subject and I don't know of any literal workarounds.  My suggestion would be to convert your PDF to an office document and make changes to the file that way.. 

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

I will often use Acrobat's "Add Text Box" feature to create additional notes on those PDF files before I add them to Evernote. Unfortunately, once I do add the document to Evernote, I am finding that Evernote will not search for and find any text added using that feature of Acrobat. It will find original text in the PDF, but none of the additional notes.

 

Does anyone out there know of a solution that will allow me to add such notes to a PDF file and make them searchable?

 

Mark, I agree that it would be very useful if Evernote would also INDEX the PDF Text Box text for searching.  Like you, I use this PDF feature all the time.

 

BTW Gaz, this is NOT about EDITING PDFs on multiple platforms.  It is simply a request for Evernote to include the PDF Text Box text for searching.  The actual editing of the PDF to add comments and annotations is done outside of Evernote, which is fine.  This really would not work well in MS Word.

[Mark JL 5]

I am glad to know someone else uses this feature, and that it is not just me having the problem!

 

If the only solution is for Evernote to make adjustments to the way PDF files are indexed, then I sincerely hope they are able to do so before too long. For me right now it is not a deal-breaking issue, but it does limit what I am able/willing to do with those added notes in Acrobat.

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

The work-around that I use is to add Tags and/or keywords as text in body of EN Note.

I make heavy use of Tags because I find the full-text (actually full-word) search returns too many false positives.

[Mark JL 5]

I am working in a school bus operation where I am printing student bus information sheets directly to PDF files from a remote server. I then use the Acrobat notes feature to add such information as the assigned drivers, when the change begins, etc. before both printing those files to hand to drivers and e-mailing them to the school for their records. When that is done I send them into Evernote for filing and record-keeping.

 

I COULD do what you are doing with tags - and may yet do so - but I would have to add tags for about 30 bus drivers to be able to effectively tag and search for these notes according to who they were assigned to. And it would also mean yet one more step in a workflow that I am already seeing as more complicated than it probably should be.

 

I agree that tag searches are far more effective than text searches, though, and make much heavier use of tags in my personal Evernote account than in my work account for just that reason. Might have to rethink what I am doing at work!

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

Mark, I hear ya.  Much of the time I will just type in text into the Search box just because it is the easiest thing to do.  Only IF it returns too many hits do I resorts to tags.  So I totally get how much easier it would be for you if EN would search your PDF notes.

 

Although I also use the Tag drop-down from the Fav bar (still using EN Mac V3), and there I can just type any part of the tag name and it quickly finds it for me.  Loss of the Fav Bar is just one of the reasons I have NOT upgraded to EN Mac V5.