# Searching notes/annotations in a pdf

**URL:** <https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/searching-notes-annotations-in-a-pdf/20070>\
**Category:** Tips\
**Created:** [May 20, 2016, 11:33am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/searching-notes-annotations-in-a-pdf/20070 "2016-05-20T11:33:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![Frederiko](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/7bcc69/32.png) [@Frederiko](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/Frederiko)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2016, 12:50pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/searching-notes-annotations-in-a-pdf/20070/4 "2016-05-20T12:50:46Z")

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Hello Jan,

The way Devonthink handles this is by the creation of a separate document which directly links either to the page in a pdf file or to a search of the specified text.

The easiest way to do this is to use the built in Annotation Template 'Data-\>New From template-\>Annotation (Cmd Opt Shift A). The Annotation Template creates a new rtf document to insert notes and tags that are relevant to the annotation.

There are a number of user contributed scripts on this forum which add additional functionality to the basic idea of the annotation template by for example collecting all the annotations for a [single source document into one rtf document](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/quotehighlight-annotate-script/10873/1)or by collecting all [the annotations for a single source document into a group](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/annotation-pane-annotation-with-links-notes-tags-v3/19889/1).

This approach in fact proves far more flexible that adding text directly to pdfs.

Frederiko

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