[RESOLVED] PDF Documents

[vb6forever]

I have an old version of Word-97, that meet my needs as rarely type letters, BUT sadly does not support PDF in file drop down list. For most of my purposes using "Print2PDF"
(supported by Win10 and the ability to print to PDF from Word-97, also meets my needs).

When I have a PDF I need to view or search, loading into Firefox again normally meets my needs.

HOWEVER, at times I have a PDF file which loads into Firefox (viewable) BUT is Not searchable.

QUESTIONS:
1) Anyway to put PDF into Word-97 file drop down list (I have original MS Word disks but can't find it on disk or it does not exist PLUS my understanding is the PDF format has changed)?
2) Why Firefox will not search all PDF files?
(I have intentionally NOT loaded the Adobe free reader as it used to (now?) put a lot of crap on the system that was hard to get rid of.

[jpbro]

Some PDFs are essentially just containers for images/scans of pages, not actual text/glyphs. The only way to search PDF files like that is with optical character recognition (OCR), and I guess Firefox's PDF viewer doesn't have that capability.

[vb6forever]

jpbro: Thanks.

1) Tried MS Edge and has same problem with this one document.
Anyway to know UPFRONT whether a particular PDF is just a container (thought here is that some way to bring up a property list that would so identify)? ALSO, if just a container Adobe reader itself would NOT work?

2) Any browser you know of that is OCR capable?

[Steve R Jones]

Ususally these things are in the PRINTER section of MS Word and other apps.

Bullzip PDF printer is a favorite of mine.

[jpbro]

The easiest way to tell is to zoom in to some text as far as possible - if it looks blocky or blurry, then it is an image and it won't be searchable. If the text stays crisp even when zoomed in a lot, then it is text that can be searched.

It's more difficult to tell programmatically. I don't know of any way without the use of a third-party library.

Lastly, AFAIK no browsers will have OCR text search capabilities. A quick Google search for "ocr pdf search" turns up a number of online services that purport to offer this feature.

[jpbro]

Actually, another easy way to check if it is an image or text based PDF is to try to select some text - if it works, then you have a searchable text PDF. If you can't select any text, then it is an image.

[vb6forever]

jpbro: GREAT IDEA regarding text selection as easy way to tell. Tired on a good document, could select, image not.

Steve R. Jones
Taking a look at BullZip PDF.

Thanks both for responding on my behalf.

[jdc2000]

If you have Windows 10 or later, the latest version of Microsoft PowerToys has an OCR utility.