Increase your search efficiency with a specially-prepared search index. A full-text index is an alphabetized list of all the words contained in one or more PDF documents. If a full-text index is available for a set of PDF documents, you can simply search the index for target words rather than searching each document separately. Searching an index is much faster than searching the text of every document.

Note: The result list from an index search is still directly linked to the file, so you can still click a result and go straight to the document.

To search a PDF index file:

  1. Choose Edit > Search, or click the Search button PDF Gold search Searching a PDF Index to open the Search Panel.
  2. In the Search box, type the word, phrase, or partial word you want to search for.
  3. Choose Currently Selected Index in the Look In menu. If you would like to change the currently selected index or add a new one, click Select Index in the Look In menu instead. The list of available indexes will pop up in the Index Manager dialog box.
  4. Select your options for the search.
  5. If you want to add more criteria for the search task, click Advanced to show advanced search options. See Using Advanced Search Options and Adding Additional Search Criteria.
  6. Click Search. The results will appear in the Results list box by page order and within proper context (if applicable).
  7. Click Stop to cancel the search. Results will be limited to those already found.
  8. Click the item in the Results list box to display the page that contains the search result. The target result in the page will be highlighted.

Note: The Stemming option will appear when you search index files. Check it to restrict the search to words that contain part (the stem) of the specified search word. For example, if you searched for “control,” the results might come back with instances of controlling, controlled, or controls. Stemming can find English words that end in ing, ed, s, ion, and more, but NOT er. This option only applies to single words and phrases in index searches and also you cannot use wildcard characters (*,?).

Searching a PDF Index