How to search for text inside multiple PDF files at once

Posted on November 9, 2007 at 11:43 am

PDF documents are probably the most commonly used set of documents in most offices today because of it’s ability to avoid accidental changes or modifications by unauthorized users. However, it’s a lot easier to find something you’re looking for in a Word document than it is for a PDF document because by default Windows search indexes all of the text inside of a Word document, thus making it easy to search all documents quickly.

The text inside PDF documents are not indexed by Windows or by other desktop search programs like Google Desktop, so most of the time if you need to find a particular PDF doc, you have to manually open each one and perform a search. If you’re simply looking for some text in one PDF, it’s not a problem, but if you need to scan through a bunch of PDF documents in a directory, you can use the Advanced PDF search features in Adobe.

With the advanced search, you can search all PDF files in a directory and it’s sub-directories in a single go. By default, if you open Adobe Reader and press CTRL + F, you’ll get the normal search box. It is located at the top right in the menu bar.

adobe search 

To use the advanced PDF search option, you can choose Open Full Reader Search in the drop down menu of the search box or press SHIFT + CTRL + F. 

Go ahead and enter the phrase you are searching for in the search box. Next choose the All PDF Documents In option under Where would you like to search heading.

pdf search

Browse to the folder where all of your PDF documents are stored and then choose the options for the search. These include Whole words only, Case-Sensitive, Include Bookmarks, and Include Comments.

pdf searches

Click Search and all PDFs under the current folder will be scanned for your term. Just click on the hyperlink in the results to open the file!

[tags]pdf search, search pdf files, word search pdf, search in pdf, search inside pdf, search multiple pdfs[/tags]

» Filed Under Computer Tips

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Comments

34 Responses to “How to search for text inside multiple PDF files at once”

  1. chris said on : June 12th, 2008 at 6:00 am

    thanks for this post!
    it was useful for me when I was looking for a way to search through a bunch of PDF files I was interested in.

    Must more useful than anywhere else,
    Chris


  2. Zen said on : June 25th, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    Thank you SO much!!!


  3. Robin Whitman said on : August 22nd, 2008 at 7:04 am

    Thank you. … One question: Is this feature in the free Adobe Reader, or is it part of the Acrobat software that creates PDF files?


  4. Naveen said on : January 19th, 2009 at 5:36 pm

    Life saver…Thanks!


  5. Dan said on : January 29th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    I spent an entire summer manually searching 100 terms through 20 or so PDFs.

    If I had known this six months ago…


  6. Ellen said on : March 7th, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    I wish I had known this trick sooner for searching inside multiple pdf files! Thanks so much for having this information available to others — I will use this feature often. Thanks!!!!!


  7. Paul said on : March 30th, 2009 at 4:37 am

    this is very useful – however it seems to only check through or report back a maximum of 100 documents at a time


  8. mamo said on : April 1st, 2009 at 6:57 am

    Thanks you! It was very useful. Now I can save my e-books into one directory and make a smart e-library that can be searched quickly!
    thank you.


  9. Matt Ellis said on : April 9th, 2009 at 1:16 pm

    What about images as pdf’s? If the pdf is an image of a document, can I search for a text string to find it? I did a test and it looks like what you described, didn’t accomplish this. Although what you provided above is exteremely useful.


  10. Jutta said on : April 16th, 2009 at 8:08 am

    Great! If I had known last year when I translated a homepage with more than 100 pages and had to go through countless catalogues to check technical terms, it would have saved me a lot of time.


  11. Sumeet said on : May 6th, 2009 at 7:41 pm

    Awesome!! Thanks a lot!!! Knew there had to be a way to search many PDF files at once…


  12. Jarod MOrris said on : May 7th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

    Images as PDFS….If you are saying the text is there, but the image is something that was scanned, you can do OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on it with good success. I say “good” because depending on the method of creating the PDF, the text may be skewed and the OCR might not read every character correctly, therefore you may get “boof” instead of “book” This OCR is only available in the full version of Acrobat. If you need this feature all the time, the $450 is worth every penny. If you just need to do this once, go get the trial version from Adobe’s website, use it and be done with your project.


  13. mark said on : May 12th, 2009 at 9:12 am

    When i use Acrobat reader 9 and do a full reader search on more than one document,(all with security set) I get a very ugly message stating that “Search has skipped x files because either these files are corrupt or you don’t have permissions to open them”, but the search results appear to be valid. There is a checkbox for not showing the message again. It’s a bit much to expect that my customer will be ok seeing this message EVERY first time they run a search on a folder of PDF docs. Any ideas


  14. Pehr said on : June 29th, 2009 at 9:50 am

    I needed to find out how to find specific instances of a topic within my digital filing system. This worked perfectly, now I will be able to avoid spending money on an expensive digital filing system.


  15. nawzad said on : October 5th, 2009 at 7:32 am

    Hi guys, can anyone tell me how can I search for 2 different words within many PDF files?


  16. Atalanta Software said on : November 9th, 2009 at 8:52 am

    Also you can try our utility – Multiformat File Searcher (www.atalantasoftware.com)


  17. Fidel said on : November 17th, 2009 at 7:26 am

    How about File hound! It’s a free program that searches for text inside files. It’s over at jimmythefork.com

    cheers,
    Fidel


  18. K said on : December 29th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    Thanks man, awesome PDF tip!


  19. Gonzi said on : January 2nd, 2010 at 10:31 am

    Great tip! I was hoping for an easier way to search through many PDF files at once.

    Thank you.


  20. Rob said on : January 21st, 2010 at 4:48 pm

    Too bad I’m still using Acrobat 5.0. It lacks this search feature.


  21. Angelica said on : January 27th, 2010 at 11:32 pm

    I have lots of excel scanned files, but i can’t search a particular word or phrase and number..Can you please help me..Thanks!


  22. Amanda said on : March 5th, 2010 at 3:02 am

    Wow!! Wonderful. This is so much more efficient than searching each PDF file manually.


  23. San said on : April 13th, 2010 at 4:21 am

    this is really a wonderful tip. Can anybody give me any script to search inside the pdf loaded on my intranet website by a web search?


  24. monica said on : April 14th, 2010 at 6:16 pm

    thankssss, very, very much! so easy, so useful!


  25. janricolnt said on : April 15th, 2010 at 8:51 pm

    Thanks its so helpful, but how can we do that in browser, cause the sidebar is show but the we cannot search with specific files by choosing folder? thanks bro..


  26. Kyle said on : May 11th, 2010 at 8:54 pm

    Thanks a million! I saved hours of time by being able to search 1,000+ PDFs in one shot!


  27. krish said on : May 13th, 2010 at 4:14 am

    awesome PDF tip!! thanks!!


  28. Bill said on : May 18th, 2010 at 10:54 am

    How would you put a bunch of pdf files on a website and make them searchable??

    Thanks


  29. nameet said on : May 30th, 2010 at 2:41 am

    Very useful and accurately explained. thanks


  30. andromkeha said on : June 15th, 2010 at 11:08 pm

    Thank you very much. This posting is very helpful…


  31. Imraan said on : July 6th, 2010 at 9:03 am

    Thank you. This was extremely helpful.


  32. Jesse said on : July 11th, 2010 at 10:10 pm

    This was easy enough to workout for myself. However, is it possible to use the same PDF search inside of something like Flash or Dreamweaver?


  33. Manjul said on : September 9th, 2010 at 12:02 am

    Hi,

    This type of PDF search is very useful for me. thanks a lot.


  34. Samyak Meher said on : July 26th, 2011 at 10:32 pm

    thank you so much for help


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