PDF files

Dwight · Post by **Dwight** » 06 Dec 2006 03:46

I have a lot of pdf files, and in the process of evaluating XYplorer I find that unless I am doing something wrong, the program cannot find text in pdf files. Open them, but does not find text in them.

jacky · Post by **jacky** » 06 Dec 2006 04:46

hmm.. not sure what you mean there. Do you mean searching text in a PDF file while previewing it? If so, XY previews those files through IE, and so using whatever application you have associated with PDF files (Reader, Foxit, etc) so it's not up to XY there.
If you meant on the File Find operations (Contained Text), I beleive that's not doable as (obviously) when you read a PDF file the text it contains isn't saved "in clear" inside the file, hence cannot be searched by an app (unless maybe it knows how to "read" PDF files & opens each file, etc)

Post by **j_c_hallgren** » 06 Dec 2006 04:52

Welcome, Dwight!

The text find ability in XY is, as far as I know, limited to what can be seen when one looks at file in "Raw View" and then selects "extract text" on Binary files...which is not the text one sees in a PDF via Adobe or similar!

It's somewhat like text that is part of a graphic BMP or JPG...it can be seen when the graphic is viewed, but when looking at raw file data, it's just a bunch of jumbled bits...

So I wouldn't exclude XY from consideration just because of that one issue!

Update: I see that while I was typing reply, jacky beat me to it saying somewhat the same thing...