Advanced Searching PDF Documents

Table of Contents Advanced Searching PDF Documents Setting Up Search Searching PDF Documents Modified PDF Files

Advanced Searching PDF Documents

Setting Up Search

Set up searching PDF documents using an index:

1. Download all PDF documents into a single folder.
2. Download the search index zip file, named StateMachineDocs.zip or as appropriate for your document set.
3. Unzip this file into the same folder as the PDF documents. You get the following files:

• • Project.pdx, such as StateMachineDocs.pdx, the search index,
  • Project, such as StateMachineDocs, the search files folder, containing .idx files.

Searching PDF Documents

You can use the index to search PDF files in either Adobe Reader or Acrobat.

Each PDF document already has the search index associated with it.

Open one of the PDF documents. The first time you open the document, a dialog displays informing you that the document is attempting to load its associated search index:

You can check Don't ask me again for this index to suppress displaying this dialog in the future.

Click the Load button to load the search index.

Select Edit > Advanced Search in the main menu. The advanced search dialog displays:

The search index radio button is automatically selected.

Enter the search text and select any of the search options below. You can also click Show More Options to display other options, such as stemming (search for words ignoring their stems, such as -ed) and proximity (require multiple words in the search to be near each other in the document).

Click the Search button to initiate the search and display the hit list:

All PDF documents containing the search string are listed. Click the *+* next to the document name to list all instances of the search text in the document, with its bounding text to show context. One of the these instance lists is shown in the figure. Clicking the hit instance opens the PDF file to that instance's page, with the found text highlighted.

Modified PDF Files

If you have modified a PDF file, say by adding highlights or bookmarks, when you perform a search the following warning dialog appears:

To avoid displaying this warning in the future, check Do not show this message again.

As long as your file modification was minor, search should work properly. However, if you have actually changed the PDF file's content, such as removing or adding pages or altering text on pages, then search results may not be valid.