You use the Find command in Acrobat Exchange or Acrobat Reader to perform full-text searches of PDF document collections indexed with Acrobat Catalog. The Find command also has powerful tools for narrowing and expanding the definition of the term you're looking for. 2 Choose Tools > Search > Query or click the Search Query button v on the toolbar to open the Search window.
When you click Search, the search window is hidden and documents that match your search query are displayed in rank order in the Search Results window. 4 Use the Search next y button and the Search previous x button to go to other results in the document. If you want to do this without having to show the search windows again, change the default preference that hides it "on view".
Wildcards in the search text increase the number of matches for the text. You may need to change the default settings in the Search Settings dialog box, illustrated on the following page.
Search
Preferences dialog box
Selecting indexes to search
When the search window is open, click the Indexes button in it.) 2 Click Add. In the Index Selection dialog box, click the check box for an index whose status you want to change, and then click OK. 1 In the Index Selection dialog box, highlight the name of the index you want to delete.
1 In the Select Index dialog box, highlight the name of the index you want information about.
Defining search queries
Searching for a term or phrase
If the phrase includes punctuation marks (other than the apostrophe) or special characters such as @ and *, they are ignored. When a word such as an or the is excluded from an index, you cannot search for the word or a phrase that includes it. The indexer can give you a list of such words and tell you if numbers are excluded.
For more information about quoted phrases, ignored characters, stopwords, and excluded numbers, see Bypassing stopwords and other exclusions.
Working around stopwords and other exclusions
How Acrobat Catalog treats separator characters
How Acrobat Search treats separator characters
How Acrobat Catalog excludes numbers
Note that alphanumeric terms consisting of numbers and separator characters such as $ may be excluded, because the Catalog program strips the separator characters before determining whether the remaining characters constitute a number.
Searching with wild-card characters
Refining a search
2 In the search window, change or replace the query that produced the list of documents. This produces a list of search results consisting of documents that are a subset of the previous list and that match the new query.
Searching with Document Info fields
If the PDF documents you are searching for are provided with Document Information values, you can use the Document Information fields in the Search window to limit the results of your searches to documents that contain specific values. The standard document information fields in PDF documents are Title, Subject, Author and Keywords. For example, you can limit the search of an index of literature to only those documents with an Author field that contains Shakespeare and a Title field.
To add the document information fields to the search window, choose File > Preferences > Search and select Show Fields. You may see additional custom fields if the creator of the PDF document included them. If you want to keep the search window small, you can hide (or keep hidden) the document information fields and type their names in the Search results that contain text.
Using wild-card characters in fields
Using Boolean expressions in fields
Using operators for document information
Searching with two or more fields
Searching with document creation and modification dates
Only documents created in the specified period and modified in the specified period are returned by a search.
Typing field and options names
Using search options
The options in the Search window expand or limit the results of searches with single terms and phrases and with Boolean expressions. To restore them to the window if the default has been changed, choose File > Preferences > Find and choose Show. If you want to keep the search window small, you can hide (or hide) the options and type their names in the Search results that contain text.
Match Capitalization finds text only when it has the same capitalization as the text you type. Before you run a search with one of these options, you can see the effects of using them with the Word Assistant.).
Word Stemming option
Cannot be used with the Match Case option If selecting the Word Stemming option appears to have no effect, the index you are searching for is likely not built with Word Stemming.
Thesaurus option
Sounds Like option
If selecting the Sounds Like option seems to have no effect, the index you are looking for is probably not built with the Sounds Like option.
Match Case option
Proximity option
Using the Word Assistant
All words that will be found in a search for this word with this option are listed. 1 If the search window is closed, click the Search Query v button on the toolbar to open it. 2 Use Word Assistant to search for the effects of a search option on a search word.
5 In the search window, click the Search text box and paste the selected word into the text box. 6 Repeat steps 3 through 5 for each word you want to use; separate each pair of words in the Search text box with AND or OR.
Searching with Boolean expressions
Searching with Boolean AND
Searching with Boolean OR
Searching with Boolean NOT
Combining Boolean operators
You can use parentheses to change the default order of evaluation for Boolean operators. darwin OR origin) AND species.
Using operator names and symbols literally
Viewing documents returned from a search
To highlight the next occurrence of a match in the document, click the Find Next button y. To highlight the first occurrence of a match in the next document listed or previous document listed, click the Find Next button y or Find Previous button x while holding down the Shift key. Or choose Tools > Find > Next Document or Tools > Find > Previous Document.
To view any other document listed, click the Search Results w button to redisplay the list, or select Tools > Search > Results; then double-click the document name.
Interpreting relevance ranking
When you use a Boolean OR operator between two words or phrases in a search, documents containing both items have a higher relevance ranking than documents containing only one of them. When you use the Proximity option, the closer the occurrence of matches for your query within a document, the higher the relevance ranking for the document. This manual, as well as the software described in it, is provided under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license.
The contents of this manual are provided for informational use only, are subject to change without notice, and should not be construed as a commitment by Adobe Systems Incorporated. Adobe Systems Incorporated assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in this book. The copyrighted software accompanying this manual is licensed to the End User for use only in full accordance with the End User License Agreement, which Licensee should read carefully before beginning to use the software.
Except as permitted by such license, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, Acrobat Capture, the Acrobat logo, Distiller, Acrobat Exchange, Adobe Type Manager, PostScript, and the slogan "If you can dream it, you can do it" are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks and ActiveX and Windows NT are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States.
Apple, Macintosh, Power Macintosh, and QuickTime are registered trademarks, and AppleScript and TrueType are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Adapted from The Oxford Thesaurus copyright 1991 Oxford University Press and Roget's II: The New Thesaurus copyright 1980 Houghton Mifflin Company. Adobe Systems Europe Limited, Adobe House, 5 Mid New Cultins, Edinburgh EH11 4DU, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Use, reproduction or disclosure is subject to the restrictions set forth in subparagraph (c)(1)(ii) of the Rights in Technical Data and Computer Software clause. Use, reproduction or disclosure is subject to the restrictions set forth in subparagraphs (a) through (d) of the Commercial Computer Software Restricted Rights clause at 52.227-19 and the restrictions set forth in Adobe's standard commercial agreement for this software. .
How to use this online guide
How to print this online guide