Law Technology

Making PDFs Searchable - Everyone Needs to Know How!

By Ross

OK, one of my favorite subjects . . . making PDFs searchable is a necessary skill, especially if your firm or business has a “PDF First” policy for electronic document exchange (which essentially might say: “If there is no legitimate reason for the recipient of an electronic document we send to edit the file, we will not send editable files - instead we will send SECURE PDFs”).

Some important basic facts about types of PDFs we encounter every day:

• PDFs of scanned documents are, by default, just pictures - “Image PDFs” as Adobe calls them
• PDFs created from text-based electronic documents (i.e. turning a Word doc or an Excel spreadsheet into a PDF) yields a searchable PDF (or an “accessible PDF” as Adobe calls them).
• Searchable PDFs have an invisible “text layer” beneath the visible “image layer” - you can search the text, copy text from it and paste it into other documents - with generally very good text recognition
• Adobe OCRing of text is faster than traditional OCR software (i.e. OmniPage, Abbyy FineReader, ReadIRIS) because Acrobat doesn’t have to worry about replicating source document’s layout and convert to Word styles and formatting (not an easy task)
• Searchable PDFs can be searched by any desktop search system (Windows Desktop Search, Vista Instant Search, Mac OS X Spotlight, X1, Copernic, Google Desktop, et al, and/or legal document managers like Worldox, Worksite, eDocs, NetDocuments, etc.).

First, I would not actually recommend turning on auto-OCRing as part of the scanning process in most cases (where whatever scanner interface in a “scan-to-PDF” situation allows it) - it will really slow down the conversion of paper into e-paper, especially with USB-connected desktop scanners. Instead, I recommend the following approaches:

1. Convert PDFs on-demand, as you need them to be searchable using the facilities built into all versions of Acrobat since v. 7 - currently, “Document | Recognize Text Using OCR” and follow the prompts.
2. Convert in batches with Acrobat Pro 8 or 9 - but it will tie up the system being used and it’s not especially speedy.
3. Copier/MFD Conversions - If you have a copier/multifunction device (MFD) that uses eCopy software, it does a very good job scanning and OCRing on the fly with high-speed MFD/copier systems, then depositing the searchable PDFs into either a network folder or sent as email attachments (or even profiled with the Worldox document manager using an available Loffler  eCopy “connector”)
4. Automated Server-Based Conversions - More and more of my clients - even some solo/small firm practices - are using Autobahn DX from Aquaforest.com. It’s not cheap - with the usable version being $2695 (or more with “maintenance” and “upgrade protection”). But it’s pretty magical - it runs on a Windows Server and can automatically (scheduled) convert all existing PDFs into searchable files and then automatically convert all newly scanned PDFs, usually in the middle of the night. This means it doesn’t tie up a human, it always gets done and doesn’t interfere with system performance during normal working hours - that’s why firms feel it’s worth the price - oh, and it also means their scanners are scanning at maximum speed to create their version of the Paper LESS Office with “image” PDF scanning (many times faster than “searchable” PDF scanning).

For two more resources, check out:

• Rick Borstein’s (from Adobe - get it from the source) discussion of making searchable PDFs here
• Ernie Svenson’s PDF for Lawyers article on the subject here.

I’m always surprised when I find people who don’t know how to make their PDFs searchable so hopefully this will help. It makes scanned PDFs infinitely more useful.  Hope this helps!

Full post as published by Ross Ipsa Loquitur on April 23, 2009 (boomark / email).