Search inside PDFs in Apple Notes?

[jagooch]

I'm looking at moving from Evernote to Apple Notes. The bulk of my documents are in searchable PDF format, though some need to be OCR'd and made searchable after they are imported. Evernote handles that fine, does Apple notes have this functionality yet?

I tested by importing a searchable PDF into both Evernote and Apple Notes.

I searched each note containing the PDF for text that I knew was in the PDF. Results:

• Evernote: Found it
• Apple Notes: Didn't find it.

I did an additional testing by opening the PDF in Preview and search for the same text. Results:

• Preview: Found it.

It looks like, as far as searchable PDF's go, Apple Notes isn't ready for prime time.

Am I missing something?

 

[mailbuoy]

I'm looking at moving from Evernote to Apple Notes. The bulk of my documents are in searchable PDF format, though some need to be OCR'd and made searchable after they are imported. Evernote handles that fine, does Apple notes have this functionality yet?

I tested by importing a searchable PDF into both Evernote and Apple Notes.

I searched each note containing the PDF for text that I knew was in the PDF. Results:

• Evernote: Found it
• Apple Notes: Didn't find it.

I did an additional testing by opening the PDF in Preview and search for the same text. Results:

• Preview: Found it.

It looks like, as far as searchable PDF's go, Apple Notes isn't ready for prime time.

Am I missing something?

I get different results. When I use the Apple Notes search I do find text in my .pdf notes. Tried half a dozen and Notes found the text each time. For example, I searched for the address on the back side of a loyalty card that I saved in Notes as a .pdf and Notes found the card (instantly).

 

[BrianBaughn]

Tested here with one pdf in a note. Found the word in the pdf.

High Sierra.

 

[jagooch]

Based on your feedback, I change my testing method

My original testing method was

1. Opening the note with an attached pdf file.
2. Press cmd +f to open the search bar.
3. Enter text that I knew was in the pdf file.
4. Look for the matching text to be highlighted , which is what the other apps I use do with matched text. The highlight it in yellow.

The search text wasn't highlighted, nor was there any other indicator that any text was matched. From this result , I assumed there was no matched text.

Re-test
I re-tested by going to the navigation pane and searching all notes for the text. I showed the pdf in the search results, but not the containing note. Also, it doesn't highlight the matching text.

So it does find the pdf containing matching text, but doesn't highlight it to help you find the location of the text. That is probably ok for short documents, but for 50-page contracts, not so much.

The work-around would be to find the document, then open it in another application. Then search again to find what you are looking for.

 

[mailbuoy]

So it does find the pdf containing matching text, but doesn't highlight it to help you find the location of the text.

I have the same test results.

Interestingly, Notes does highlight the matching text in other notes, but not in the attached/embedded .PDFs. I agree this is a shortcoming, but for me this is not a big enough issue to cause me to switch back to Evernote (again, ha!).

 

[Vasilisxd]

I find Apple Notes ability to find the text pretty bad. On the other hand , Google Keep does an excellent job even with the smallest text in a bad photo.