PDF Preview not working

[umdjb]

I am trying to search for words in a PDF document using Preview but when I type text into the search box nothing comes up.

It was working a few weeks ago...Is there a setting that I am not aware of?

 

[AlexisV]

That shouldn't happen. What happens if you try searching a plain text document instead?

 

[Richard Flynn]

Are you talking about the same PDF—i.e. you could search it before, but now you can’t? If so, then I don’t know what the problem is.

But if you can search some PDFs and not others, then that's because some PDFs are merely pictures of a printed page, and so the software (in this case, Preview.app) doesn't know that it's dealing with text, and doesn't know how to search that text. Hope that makes sense…

 

[BoughtAAPL@4.00]

What happens if you search for those words using Acrobat Reader?