How to search multiple Pdf Files at Once

By Cathy Margolin

Reviews Editor

reviews@netsurfernews.com

When you do a Windows search, it does search Word files but not pdf files.  Pdf files are Acrobat files saved as Portable Document formats for ease of reading on any computer PC, MAC or Linux.  Say you are working on that research project or that new invention and you have saved a lot of pdfs in a folder. You remember a term 1 trillion but you forgot where you saw it in this pdf folder of tons of pdf files.  How do you find it?

Open Acrobat reader (for this purpose I am using Acrobat X). There are two ways:

Shorter one:  Click Shift- Ctrl- F (at the same time) which brings up the Search box.

 Click “ all PDF Documents in” and pull the arrow on the box down to the very bottom, to browse my computer. After selecting browse my computer, select the folder you want to scan, and enter the word you want to search for, and hit search.

It may take a bit but it is searching all the pdfs in that folder.

Once it comes back you can then click on the link and it will open that file for you and point to where it is.

 Second Way: Once you open a file in Acrobat, hit Ctrl-F to open the search box (you must have a file open). On the box use the arrow drop down to select "Open Full Acrobat Search" and proceed with the steps above.