Search for PDF's with no text

[garyacker]

I am trying to create a smart folder in finder that will collect all kindDF files which are scanned documents that are still in image format without a text layer.

This folder would represent PDF files that need to be run thru Acrobat's OCR in order to make the text searchable in spotlight.

I know that the DevonThink program does this by searching on an attribute "word count" = 0, and it works quite well.

I have not been able to find a comparable way to do it in Finder

(using Snow Leopard)

 

[reubs]

One way to do this (I think) will be to find some way to tag those files when they are scanned or imported into your system. This can be done with Automator, Apple Script, or something like Hazel.

When your file hits a certain folder, the action or script will write a tag to the file that's been imported. From there, you can set up a smart folder to find all PDFs that have that tag associated with it.

I'm not adept at scripting, so I can't tell you how to do this. I'm sure there's someone around here who could help you out with that part, though. The next trick would be to get the tag taken off of it so that it doesn't stay in that folder.