Searching for text and patterns

1. Click in the Search box on the title bar and choose Advanced Search… from the drop-down menu to open the Search panel.
2. Below “Where would you like to search?” check one of the following to define the search scope.
   1. To search the text in the current PDF document, select “In the current PDF document”. This option will be grayed out if no document is open.
   2. To search the text in all PDF documents in a specific folder or disk, select All PDF Documents in > choose one of the disks or user-selected search paths. Foxit PDF Editor will show the path of the currently opened document for easier location. 
   3. To search the text in all the PDF documents that are currently opened in Foxit PDF Editor, select All open PDF documents. 
   4. To search the text in selected documents in PDF portfolio, please select Selected PDFs in portfolio. This option is only available when a PDF portfolio is opened. 
   5. To search text in the PDF portfolio, please select All PDFs in portfolio. This option is only available when a PDF portfolio is opened. 
   6. To search PDF indexes, please choose Select Index. This option helps you search the index of the entire set of documents quickly if your PDF document or document collections include a full-text index. If you have added indexes in Foxit PDF Editor before, you can also choose Currently Selected Indexes option directly to search your currently selected indexes. For more information, please refer to “Searching PDF indexes”.
3. Select one of the following search criteria from the drop-down list under the file location box: 
   1. Match exact word or phrase: Search for instances that match the entire word or phrase (including the spaces) you specified in the text search box.
   2. Match any of the words: Search for any instances that match at least one of the words. 
   3. Looks like search pattern: Search for patterns like phone number, social security number, or email address in the PDF file. This option is not available when you search PDF indexes. 
   4. Match All of the words: Search for any instances that match at least one of the words, but not necessarily in the order you type the words. If the document does not contain all of the words you type, no matched results will be found. This option is available only for searching a full-text PDF index.
4. For text search, input the word you would like to search in “What word or phrase would you like to search for” box. For pattern search, select the pattern you want to search from the Select your pattern drop-down list, and choose the specific county and region from the Country/Region drop-down list. 
5. (Optional) Check any of the following options to specify the additional search criteria, if needed. 
   1. To limit the search to match only whole words, check Whole Words Only. For example, if you search for the word Read, the word Reader will not be found. This criterion is only available for text search. 
   2. To make the search case-sensitive, check Case-Sensitive. For example, if you search for the word text, the words Text and TEXT will not be found. This criterion is only available for text search. 
   3. To search words in comments, please check Include Comments.
   4. To search words in bookmarks, please check Include Bookmarks. This criterion is only available for text search. 
   5. To search words in attachments, please check Include Attachments. 
   6. To search for two or more words that are separated by no more than a specified number of words specified in the Search preferences, please check Proximity. This option is available in index search when Match All of the words is selected.
   7. To find instances that contain the stem of the specified search word, please check Stemming. For example, if you search for “opening” with Stemming option checked, instances of “open”, “opened”, “opens”, and “opening” will be found. This criterion applies to text search and index search, and is not available if either Whole Words Only or Case-Sensitive is selected.   
   8. To highlight all the text search results, please check Highlight All Text. 
   9. To limit search in order to match criteria such as document properties and metadata, check the option in Use these additional criteria group, and specify the additional criteria, including Author, Date Created, Subject, etc. These options are only available when you execute advanced text search in multiple PDF files in a specific folder or disk.

Tip: The additional search criteria options are collapsed by default. You can click More to show all the options. 

6. Click Search button.
7. Each item listed includes a few words of context and an icon that indicates the type of occurrence. Check the search results with the following steps: 

• If necessary, click the plus sign (+) to expand the search results.
• (Optional) For advanced search in multiple documents or portfolios, you can select an option from the Sort By drop-down list near the bottom of the Search panel to sort the search results by date modified, filename, or location. 
• To collapse the file path and have a quick view about the file name, check Collapse File Path option at the bottom of the Search panel. 
• Click a search result directly to view it in the PDF file. 

8.  (Optional) Click the Save button in the Search panel, and choose Save results to PDF or Save results to CSV to save the search results. 
9. (Optional) Click New Search button to start a new search task.

Notes: 

1. For each search, layers, form fields, and digital signatures in the document will also be searched automatically. If some of the search results occurs on a hidden layer, when selecting the results in the Search panel you will be prompted whether to make that layer visible. 
2. To find or edit text in a scanned or image-based PDF, you need to convert the content into searchable or editable text using the OCR feature. See also OCR PDFs.