Make PDF Comments searchable with Mac...

Hello All,

I'm about to re-enter school for my master's degree and I'm expecting to do a lot of work with PDF files (reading, writing, editing, etc.).?The comments feature is particularly useful, since I will need to be taking notes when reading such documents.?After some mild testing--open a PDF, place arbitrary comment within file, then save a close PDF--has shown that the comments within such PDFs are not searchable by the Mac Spotlight feature.?Is there a way to enable this ability, or am I stuck making an entirely separate text file with notes for every PDF I read?

Thanks for the information,

WD

Make PDF Comments searchable with Mac...

A quick Google search turns up nothing. I've never heard of a way to search PDF comments with Spotlight. Spotlight looks for metadata which is stored EXTERNAL to the PDF file itself, or other file formats it supports. It doesn't actually READ inside the PDF (which could be painfully slow).

You could try selecting each PDF, and choosing File %26gt; Get Info. In the Spotlight Comments field at the top enter keywords for things you want to be able to search for in Spotlight.

Make PDF Comments searchable with Mac...

Hello Steve,

While in one case, I suppose you are correct in postulating that Spotlight catalogs metadata external to file, that's not entirely true.?For instance, I keep a text file called ''Info'' where I place random bits of information I'd like to come back to for more research (i.e. books to read, movies to see).?If I do a Spotlight search for ''Visual Explanations'' (sans quotes), this Information file is returned because it contains the text ''Visual Explanations, Quantities, Evidence, Narrative - Edward Tufte'', a book I'd like to purchase in the future.?So Spotlight is capable of reading some internal file information, and I had hoped to enable it to read my notes contained within PDF files.

I've considered tagging PDFs using Tagit (for Mac), which adds tags to the Info field in the Get Info dialog box, but while that adds to my ability to categorize a file according to general tags, it does not allow me to look within large quantities of random notes in my PDF comments.?Creating tags that encompass a commented PDF would take far too long and would add an unwieldy amount of tags to the system.?

I hope this clarifies my thoughts on the matter--thanks for your reply.

Spotlight does actually read inside files of certain types (including doc and PDF). (File content is added to the metadata that is used to generate the Spotlight index for supported file types.)

I'm not sure if there's any nice way to get it to read comments, though, as Apple doesn't support all of the features that can be included in PDFs. Since they've added commenting, though, it's strange they don't search comments well.

What about content in a text box? That might be a workaround if that content gets indexed.

Using my test PDF file, I've typed unique text in Callout boxes, Comment boxes, and Text boxes, and so far none of them is searchable in Spotlight.?I'm not sure what the capture rate of Spotlight is--that is, how soon things are added to the Spotlight catalog--but after two days of using the computer and leaving it on overnight, Spotlight has yet to allow me to find these items in a search.?So far, I'm guessing that I'll have to export the comments to a text file after doing my markup, or just take notes somewhere else.

One workaround (not ideal, since you'll end up creating a duplicate file of your document) would be to create another PDF of your document by selecting ''Print with Comment Summary'' from the Comments menu. Printing to the Adobe PDF engine while selecting the fourth option (and probably the first option) would give you searchable comments. Unfortunately, you'd end up having duplicates of each document: one searchable document and one ''working'' document.

I've just tried it with the fourth layout option, and Spotlight found my test text immediately.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of Pear Note

You could use an external note-taking tool that supports PDF files such as Pear Note. I'm a little biased (as I write Pear Note), but I use it for taking notes on PDF documents all the time. The notes and PDF are both searchable by Spotlight. It's definitely a different way of working, but it accomplishes the goal of linking notes with PDF document and having both be searchable.