Selectable, but unsearchable text in a PDF

Even if you have text in a PDF which can be selected with a cursor it may not actually be searchable. If you search for a term which you are sure should appear in a document, and nothing comes up, verify that the text you can select and copy to your clipboard is actually searchable ASCII text. Acrobat, or another PDF Viewer may not be able to convert the text embedded in the PDF.

If this happens, try these solutions:

1. Under Edit . . . Preferences . . . Search, click the 'Purge Cache Contents' option.

2. Under Tools . . . Protection, run 'Sanitize Document'. This utility may remove hidden text.

If neither of these steps works, you may need to write the PDF as a new image and re-OCR. The problem can stem from a corrupted Unicode map. Acrobat uses two tables to store fonts - one for the shapes on the image, and another for the Unicode text. Software can interfere with the font mapping intentionally and render the PDF unsearchable.

E-Sticker

E-Sticker is a great tool for Adobe Acrobat which can help you easily add exhibit stickers to PDFs which look just like the stickers used by deposition reporters and paralegals at trial. See: https://exhibitsticker.com/ .

A free version is available. After it's installed, it will be added with the stamp tool in the annotations for Adobe Acrobat XI.

When the sticker is selected you will be prompted to enter an exhibit number in a dialog box.

The sticker can be positioned anywhere on a page.

When you don't have a license for Trial Director or another program that can bulk sticker PDFs, even the free version of E-Sticker can come in very handy.

The paid version of E-Sticker will automatically advance to the next number, and includes an array of additional options.

Script to extract pages with string from multiple PDF files

Karl Heinz Kremer has posted a very useful Java script here. It can be used to extract each page from a set of multiple PDFs that contains a specific string. The script is posted below.

• You can execute this script in Adobe Acrobat XI by going to Tools . . . Action Wizard . . . Create New Action.

• In the new dialog box which pops us, from the tools menu on the left, in the 'More Tools' drop down menu, select 'Execute JavaScript'.

• Click on 'Specify Settings' and then enter the script.

• Edit the script so the string you want to search for is listed in quotes on the line which begins, 'var stringToSearchFor'.

• Be sure to uncheck the 'Prompt User' box.

• Name and save the action.

• Run the action from the Action Wizard section of Tools.

• When the action is run you will be prompted to select either mulitple files or a folder.

• After the script executes, you will be left with one PDF for each source file that only contains the pages from the source file which include the searched for string.

As always I tested this script tonight and confirmed that it works.

// Iterates over all pages and find a given string and extracts all

// pages on which that string is found to a new file.

var pageArray = [];

var stringToSearchFor = "Court";

for (var p = 0; p < this.numPages; p++) {

// iterate over all words

for (var n = 0; n < this.getPageNumWords(p); n++) {

if (this.getPageNthWord(p, n) == stringToSearchFor) {

pageArray.push(p);

break;

}

}

}

if (pageArray.length > 0) {

// extract all pages that contain the string into a new document

var d = app.newDoc(); // this will add a blank page - we need to remove that once we are done

for (var n = 0; n < pageArray.length; n++) {

d.insertPages( {

nPage: d.numPages-1,

cPath: this.path,

nStart: pageArray[n],

nEnd: pageArray[n],

} );

}

// remove the first page

d.deletePages(0);

}