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Learn How To Search For A Word In A PDF Document

July 31, 2023 3.9K views

Depending on its volume, searching through a single PDF book can be challenging. When you’re drowning in paperwork or are generally swamped in PDF docs, you need to know all the tricks and hacks to quickly find what you’re looking for. Luckily, there are some specific operators that can help you become efficient in searching for a word in PDF files. So if you are looking for how to search for a word in PDF, this comprehensive article will help you do so like an expert. However, it’s  way easier to find certain words you’re looking for in a PDF document and pdf searcher than that of a Word.

Basic Search Options Available in a PDF Editor

  • To execute a basic search request, you can do by following:

  • Press “Ctrl+F”, and type your search term inside the text box in the Find dialog box. Select the Next or Previous buttons to move across the search results.

Advanced Search Options Available in a PDF Editor

  • To use the Advanced Search feature, click on the gear icon or drop down arrow from the right side toolbar.

Brief explanation of the advance search options available are:

  • Match Whole World Only: This search operator returns only the precise match of the word you supplied. If you are seeking for the word is and it is already a part of many other words such as crisis and simple, selecting Whole words only will choose only the and as a single word, ignoring the saturated terms.

  • Case Sensitive: Choosing this option will sort the results by letter case. For example, the word And will only return And, not the and with a different letter case.

  • Include Bookmarks: If the word (hypertension) you searched existed in your bookmarks, it will appear in the search results as well.

  • Include Notes: Your search will be completed within Notes/Comments, much like a bookmark.

1. How to Easily Search For a Word in PDF Using WPS PDF Editor

WPS PDF Editor features the best features regarding PDF editing, in the market. The tool is known for its efficiency and for free office productivity solutions. You can search for a word within a PDF document and can make multiple changes across the platform such as finding a word and replacing it with another word. WPS Office includes operational procedures that are more common for PDF processings. To understand how to search for a word in PDF, you need to look into these steps described below.

3 Steps To Find PDF Content on WPS PDF

  • Click on the Search icon from the right vertical toolbar or simply press “Ctrl+F”. 

  • A search window will appear giving you the extra option to type (and even replace) a word or phrase you are finding.

  • From the “Set Up” drop-down panel, you can look across the search with case-sensitive, including bookmarks/notes and whole words filters.

2. How to Search a Specific Word/Phrase in PDF Using Adobe Reader

  • Press Ctrl+F or choose “find” from the edit tab’s drop down for basic, and “Open Full Reader Search” from the search box's drop down menu or press Ctrl+shift+F for the advanced PDF search option.

  • Enter the word you wanna find in the search box. Then, under the Where do you want to search? option, choose “All PDF Documents In”. 

  • Select the search options after navigating to the folder holding all of your PDF documents. 

  • You may narrow your search by using whole words only, case sensitive, include bookmarks, and include comments. 

  • When you click Search, your term will be searched for in all PDFs in the current folder. Simply click on the URL in the results to access the file.

WPS PDF Editor-Search For PDF Content With Just A Click

This article demonstrated how to use the top PDF editors, WPS PDF Editor and Adobe Acrobat, to identify your required material in a PDF. You can simply search for a word in PDF using the WPS PDF Editor, by hitting Ctrl+F or clicking the search tool from the left toolbar. You may also use Adobe Acrobat to find a certain word or text in numerous PDFs but the best and free solution is WPS Office. Download the WPS Office now, for free.

FAQs

How Can We Search a Word in PDFs?

Press Ctrl+F or locate the Find operator window in WPS PDF Editor or WPS Office (Both can read and edit PDFs). Type the word you want to find.

How to Search for a Word in a Scanned PDF?

If you have scanned version of PDF, then simply convert it to the .txt format with the help of WPS Office OCR converter to find the desired phrase or word.

15 years of office industry experience, tech lover and copywriter. Follow me for product reviews, comparisons, and recommendations for new apps and software.