Search PDF Files

Search is one of the most powerful features in Project Center. You can use it to find text in .PDF files for the current project or across several projects.

To search for text in .PDF files

1.     From any activity center in Project Center, simply enter the text you are looking for in the Search field (located in the Toolbar at the top of Project Center).

2.     Click the drop-down arrow next to the Search button and choose the search option to use, then click Search, as shown here:

All files and project items containing the text string in are listed in the Search Results window.  

3.     To narrow down the search to include only .PDF files, apply search filters. Expand the Filter By list and select PDF Files (.PDF), as shown here:

The list is filtered to include only .PDF files.

Password protected .PDF cannot be searched because Project Center cannot open them.

4.     When you find the file you want, you can select it from the list of results, and a preview of it appears at the bottom for many supported file types. For example, if you're looking for a file with a .PDF extension, you can filter on that file type, select the file from the list, and preview it in the Preview tab. Double-click on the file to launch it in its native application.

Search images in PDF files using OCR

Project Center scans for text in images in .PDF files. See Search Scanned Documents (OCR) for more information.

Search text in PDF files from AutoCAD .SHX files

Project Center cannot OCR .PDF files that contain annotations created from AutoCAD .SHX files because .SHX files are converted to vector graphics, which are lines. You can do one of the following: Replace the .SHX files in your AutoCAD file with TrueType fonts and then create your PDFs, or use the raster option when creating a .PDF from AutoCAD so that the entire file can be scanned and indexed.

For information on how Search handles external references, see Search Overview.