PDF's not searchable

[Leeta 0]

Hi,

 

I use a scanSnap scanner and have always had it set to make searchable pdf's. Somehow the setting got changed and now i've done a heap of scanning to just plain pdf. From what I've read EN should make them searchable anyway but this is not happening. I can't select text in the pdf like I usually can and when I search for text within the pdf it doesn't find it.

 

Help! How do I make them searchable? 

 

Thanks.

[CalS 5,280]

Something happen to your ScanSnap settings?  In any case, if you are premium user and the notes are in a synced notebook they should be searchable (maybe with a lag for new ones).  There seems to be a difference of opinion sometimes as to whether free user PDFs are OCRd, most say yes I think.  If you are a free user you can test it yourself with a PDF which is in a synced notebook.  If you have Adobe or something equivalent, you could brute force an OCR just to be sure the PDF is "good".

[JMichaelTX 4,117]

csihilling pretty much laid it out for you.  I'll just add this:

1. Evernote/Charboyd just confirmed that, for Free Account owners, Evernote will search PDFs that are text-based or were OCR'd prior to upload to Evernote
2. If you open the PDFs already in Evernote, and OCR them with a 3rd party app, then save and close, Evernote will re-upload the entire PDF, which will go against your monthly allowance.

[Leeta 0]

I have Evernote Premium but I've just found reference to this problem from someone else and it seems to have something to do with the Mac indexing rather than the pdf.