Advanced Search
Advanced Search looks through the current document, all open documents or a whole folder of PDFs, and groups the results by file. For a quick search of one document, use the find bar instead.
Open it
Choose Edit ▸ Advanced Search… or press Ctrl+Shift+F. The Advanced search tab opens in the sidebar with the cursor in the search box.
Run a search
- Choose a Scope: Current document, All open documents or Folder….
- For a folder, click Choose folder…. Tick Include subfolders to search the folders inside it.
- Type your text in Search for… and choose how to Match it.
- Click Search (or press Enter). A progress bar shows the file being read. Click Cancel to stop; the hits found so far stay on screen.
Options
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Match: Exact phrase | Finds the words together, in order |
| Match: All words | Finds places where every word appears |
| Match: Any words | Finds places where at least one word appears |
| Case sensitive | Matches capitalisation exactly |
| Whole words | Ignores matches inside longer words |
| Stemming | Treats word endings as equal, so "pump" also finds "pumps" and "pumping" |
| Regular expression | Reads the search box as a regular expression |
| Within N words | With All words, only counts hits where the words are within N words of each other (1 to 1000) |
| Pattern | Ignores the search box and finds a common kind of text: Email, Phone, Date, URL, Amount or Custom regex |
| Comments | Also searches the text of comments saved in the file |
| Bookmarks | Also searches bookmark titles |
When you choose Custom regex in Pattern, type your expression in the Custom regular expression box that appears.
Note
Comments you have added but not yet saved are not in the file, so they are not searched. Save first.
Folders and the index
Large folders can take a while to read. Tick Use index to search a saved index instead. Click Build/Update index to create it; later updates re-read only the files that have changed. If you tick Use index before building one, you will be asked to build it first.
Work with the results
- Results are grouped by file, with the number of hits beside each name. Comment and bookmark hits are labelled.
- Use Sort by to order files by File name, Modified date or Hits.
- Click a hit to open that file (if it is not already open) at the right page. Text hits are highlighted.
- The panel shows up to 5,000 hits. If there are more, the status line says so.
- Click Export CSV to save every hit to a file named
search-results.csv, including any beyond the 5,000 shown.
Tip
To remove what you find, use Mark all for redaction from the find bar. See Redaction. Every shortcut is listed under Keyboard shortcuts.