Searching PDF file

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3 total messages Started by CCT Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:57

#331

Author: CCT
Date: Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:57

13 lines
1483 bytes

If this should be posted to another forum, advise and will repost.

I am a new user of Acrobat Pro 9 Extended; got it as gift. While I am grasping the basics, this one has me stumped.

I have downloaded several online PDF files of outdated, and sometimes antique, books from sites such as Google Books, NYPL (New York Public LIbrary), Archives, etc.

In trying the search function on one last nite, it advised the word was not present. Yet, on the first page ... and all throughout ... the word (Texas) is heavily used; likely several hundreds as it is almost a 900 page book from the late 1800s.

I processed the book using the OCR recognition, and that helped somewhat. But in doing so, the original file went from a file of 1.3 mg, to something like almost 20.0 mg; and took several hours to process.

Is there a more appropriate way to activate in a PDF file the ability to so a search; when it was not implemented upon the files original creation date?

TIA

Re: Searching PDF file

#332

Author: Philip_Levy
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:31

7 lines
1383 bytes

It is important to understand what is actually in the PDF document. All that may be there are pictures of the pages rather than text itself. In this case, search is clearly much more limited.

You can usually determine this easily by trying to select the text. If there isn't any, you end up selecting the image of the entire page.

OCR in Acrobat can be helpful here, but as with all OCR, your mileage may vary.

The only reason I can think of for the file size to increase so dramatically after OCR is if the OCR success rate was very low and you end up with lots of images of the failed text. Whether this happens depends on the options and Acrobat version you use. Searchable Image may be the best OCR option, but regardless, if there is a low OCR success rate, searching won't work very well.

Re: Searching PDF file

#339

Author: Compression_User
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2009 22:03

1 lines
842 bytes

Sounds like an interesting test case - 900 pages in 1.3 M is only 1444 bytes per page - seems so low res and/or highly compressed that even a human couldn't read it. I'd like to experiment with that file a bit, can you send it to me? mparker@cvisiontech.com

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