(Archived) Searching PDF Premium Account

[htmanning 0]

I have a Premium account and have been trying to search PDFs. Many times, I cannot locate a word by typing it into the main search field in Evernote. I can open a single note, click COMMAND+F and search there and Evernote finds what I'm looking for. This doesn't really help me search all my PDFs for keywords. Is this how it's supposed to work and is there a workaround?

[engberg 89]

If you can find a word within an individual note, you should also be able to search for that note within your account.

Please open a support inquiry at the bottom of: http://www.evernote.com/about/contact/support/

We will want to investigate one of these notes to see if we can reproduce your problem using the same PDF.

Thanks

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

You don't have them in a local notebook do you?

Also, there is a bit of a turnaround time. You have to sync up to EN servers, let the servers do their indexing & then sync down again to your desktop client.

[htmanning 0]

Hi,

What do you mean by "You don't have them in a local notebook do you?" If I sync everything aren't all my notes local?

I scan a document, put it in Evernote, sync it, wait awhile, sync again, sync again, etc. Then I search from the main search bar and it can't find what I'm looking for. I open a specific note and search using Apple+F and I find what I'm looking for. How long is the turnaround time? An hour?

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

A local notebook is local only to your computer. It's a non-sync'd notebook. You determine if it's sync'd or local when you create the notebook. I don't know about Macs, but on Windows, the sync'd notebooks have a green box with the sync symbol in it to the left of the notebook name. Local notebooks have a grey box with the sync symbol & a red line through it.

If you login to the web client (Evernote.com, sign in at top right), do you see your PDFs there?

If they are in a local only notebook, you'll need to create a new, sync'd notebook & move the notes to the new notebook. Notebooks cannot be changed from local/sync'd.

[htmanning 0]

Gotcha. I didn't realize you could have local only notes. The notes I'm referring to are synchronized.

I would suggest Evernote create an option where local only PDF notes could be searched. That could be the gold star premium option.

I asked this in the Windows forum but do you know why searching PDFs doesn't work the same in the Windows version? I search a term and it selects a note, but does not highlight in the note where that search term is. In the Mac version it highlights all occurrences of the search term making it easy to find what I'm looking for.

[dustinboyd 0]

I am having the same sort of issue. If I use the desktop Mac client and run a search I get results that are obviously not picking up all the results (e.g. if I search for a word that is very common to all of my uploaded PDFs I only get a few hits rather than the many I would expect).

Now, if I go online and run the same exact search I get many more results than I do if I run the exact same search on the Mac client. I cannot, however, seem to discern any noticeable pattern.

I know that usually errors like this are from some sort of user malfunction, and that is still entirely possible. However, It seems to me that there is some issue with the Mac clients search feature. I have ensured:

I am a premium user

I am using a synched notebook

I have synched the pdfs in question and waited a reasonable period of time (7 days) and re-synched (I do this every day).

My brain is plugged in and functions and I know how to use the search feature

[engberg 89]

If you can search for a word in a PDF and find the note on the web, then you should be able to find the same note on your Mac client. What version of the client are you using?

If you make a trivial change to one of those notes (e.g. add a period at the end of the Title of the note), can you search for the PDF successfully?