{"id":1522,"date":"2023-04-28T16:15:18","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T22:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.filecenter.com\/blog\/?p=1522"},"modified":"2025-04-20T02:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T08:04:18","slug":"cant-search-pdf-documents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filecenter.com\/blog\/cant-search-pdf-documents\/","title":{"rendered":"I Can&#8217;t Search PDF Documents"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Problem:<\/strong> When you try to search for PDF documents in Windows (using the Windows Search engine or any other desktop search engine), you don&#8217;t get any results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This can have a few causes. We&#8217;ll cover each one, with the fix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><em>Key Takeaways:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Windows Search may not be set up<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>You may not have the proper iFilter for PDF documents<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Your PDFs may not be searchable<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Problem: Windows Search Isn&#8217;t Set Up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>First things first, make sure that Windows Search is actually up and running.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Click the Windows <em>Start<\/em> button<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Type &#8220;Indexing Options&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Click <em>Indexing Options<\/em> in the search results<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Make sure that the folder that holds your PDFS (or its parent) is listed in the <em>Included Locations<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If it&#8217;s not, click <em>Modify<\/em>, then browse out to the folder, select it, and click <em>OK<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-background\" style=\"background-color:#fce060\"><strong><em>READ ALSO:<\/em><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.filecenter.com\/blog\/best-document-management-software\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">10 Best Document Management Software for Small Businesses in 2024<\/a><br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.filecenter.com\/blog\/best-document-scanning-software\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">10 Best Document Scanning Software for Windows 10 Users in 2024<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Problem: You Don&#8217;t Have an iFilter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>If you can search <em>other<\/em> kinds of files, like Word Docs, but you can&#8217;t search PDFs, or if you can find PDFs by <em>filename<\/em> but not content, it&#8217;s possible that you don&#8217;t have an &#8220;iFilter&#8221; in place for PDF documents. To explain, the Windows indexing service doesn&#8217;t understand the PDF file format, so you need an <em>iFilter<\/em>, which is a helper for PDF files. Here&#8217;s how to check:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Click the Windows <em>Start<\/em> button<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Type &#8220;Indexing Options&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Click <em>Indexing Options<\/em> in the search results<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Click the <em>Advanced<\/em> button<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Go to the <em>File Types<\/em> tab<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Scroll down to <em>PDF<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>Next to the PDF entry, it should say <em>PDF Filter<\/em> or <em>File Properties Filter<\/em> or <em>Reader Search Handler<\/em> or something that indicated you have an iFilter installed. If it says something like <em>No iFilter<\/em>, then you need to install one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Also, if you select <em>PDF<\/em>, it should say <em>Index Properties and File Contents<\/em> below. If it doesn&#8217;t, try to select that option. If it&#8217;s disabled, that&#8217;s another indicator that you don&#8217;t have the right iFilter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Solution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>One option is to install the free Adobe Reader. It may give you the iFilter. <a href=\"https:\/\/get.adobe.com\/reader\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Download it here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can also download just the iFilter here (64-bit only):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ftp.adobe.com\/pub\/adobe\/acrobat\/win\/11.x\/PDFFilter64Setup.msi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">http:\/\/ftp.adobe.com\/pub\/adobe\/acrobat\/win\/11.x\/PDFFilter64Setup.msi<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After you install Adobe Reader or the iFilter, go back through the steps above to make sure the <em>Indexing Options<\/em> are now set properly for PDFs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now the bad news. Windows won&#8217;t automatically re-index the PDF files. You have to rebuild the indexes. Here&#8217;s how:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Go back to your Control Panel &gt; <em>Indexing Options<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Click the <em>Advanced<\/em> button<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>On the <em>Index Settings<\/em> tab, click <em>Rebuild<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>It may take awhile to rebuild the indexes. You can see the status on the Indexing Options dialog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Problem: Your PDFs Aren&#8217;t Searchable<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>It may be that you can&#8217;t search your PDFs because they don&#8217;t have any text in them. For example, if your PDF is a scanned document, it&#8217;s just a <em>picture<\/em> of a document. It doesn&#8217;t have any actual text for Windows to index. Here&#8217;s how to know:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Open one of your PDFs (any PDF viewer will work)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Try double-clicking on a word to select it, or &#8230;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Try searching within the viewer for a word in the body<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If you can&#8217;t select or find a word, your PDF doesn&#8217;t have text<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Solution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>You need to make your PDF searchable. How? With &#8220;optical character recognition&#8221; or <em>OCR<\/em>. This is a process that goes through your scans trying to identify anything that looks like a letter or a word, then turns it into real text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many OCR options out there. We&#8217;ll recommend two: <a href=\"\/filecenter-features.html\">FileCenter<\/a> and <a href=\"\/automate-features.html\">FileCenter Automate<\/a>. Why? Because they&#8217;re incredibly easy, and they both have free trials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>FileCenter makes it effortless to organize your files and work with your PDFs. It includes a full-fledged PDF editor that&#8217;s on par with Adobe Acrobat Professional, but at a fraction the cost. Better yet, it has one-click OCR for your PDFs. Here&#8217;s how to make a PDF searchable in FileCenter:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Either select the PDF or open it in FileCenter&#8217;s <em>PDF Editor<\/em><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Click the <em>OCR<\/em> button<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what if you have hundreds, or even thousands, of PDFs you need to make searchable? That&#8217;s where FileCenter Automate comes in. FileCenter Automate can run OCR against whole folders of PDFs all at once. In other words, it&#8217;s a bulk OCR tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Take a look at the free trials for <a href=\"\/filecenter-trial.php\">FileCenter<\/a> and <a href=\"\/automate-trial.php\">FileCenter Automate<\/a>. They&#8217;re fully functional and have no obligations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Problem: When you try to search for PDF documents in Windows (using the Windows Search engine or any other desktop search engine), you don&#8217;t get any results. This can have a few causes. We&#8217;ll cover each one, with the fix. &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.filecenter.com\/blog\/cant-search-pdf-documents\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">I Can&#8217;t Search PDF Documents<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2972,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"table_tags":[],"class_list":["post-1522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pdf-software"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>I Can&#039;t Search PDF Documents<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you can&#039;t search your PDF documents in Windows, here&#039;s a quick fix. A complete guide to making PDFs searchable and fixing search problems.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.filecenter.com\/blog\/cant-search-pdf-documents\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I Can&#039;t Search PDF Documents\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you can&#039;t search your PDF documents in Windows, here&#039;s a quick fix. 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