Some converted PDF documents are not searchable in DT?

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hi - I was searching for a particular phrase in my DT database today and I noticed a document that should have shown up did not. I thought to myself that maybe it was in an unsearchable PDF format so opened it up to check and I was able to highlight and select any text I needed and paste it into another program. To be sure I went ahead and ran Data -> Convert to searchable PDF on the document. But when I did my search in DT again, it still did not show up.

I did some looking around and I found other instances where a document that appears to be searchable is not showing up in my DT searches. I really need to be sure that documents matching search terms are showing up, am I missing something basic here?

Thanks in advances!

2

Which search settings & term did you use? And did you use pdftotext or PDFKit (see Preferences > PDF & PS) to index the files?

3

I used PDFKIT (thanks for pointing to where that was!). For the search I used the search box at the top of my DT window that is labeled “Find”.

4

Scratch that…I just looked and realized the “Find” was changed to “Name” (My one year old son had been clicking around with my mouse but I didn’t think he had clicked anything open).

So problem solved…it was my mistake (was up way to early this AM)

One last question though, Is there an advantage to PDFKIT or pdftotext?

Thanks!

5

Sometimes the conversion to text by pdftotext is better, sometimes the one by PDFKit. Version 2 will only use the improved PDFKit of Leopard and therefore it’s a good idea to use already PDFKit.