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Forum Discussion
Searching for keywords in PDFs that have OCR doesn't return any result.
We recently digitized a bunch of historical materials for our organization and paid extra in the digitization to apply OCR to the PDFs. We then uploaded the files to our Dropbox account for shared storage, with the goal to be able to use Dropbox search to search through the historical materials. For instance, searching the name of one our steering committee members and pulling up all the historical PDFs that the individual was referenced in. However, the search doesn't seem to be working at all. It is the same when I used the Dropbox app on my computer. The only time the search seems to work, is when I open the document locally on my computer, close that document, and then search for a phrase I know is in the PDF. But I have to look at results that are "On My Mac" as opposed to results that are in my Dropbox folder. This isn't a feasible solution for us as there are many PDF documents we want to be able to search and we can't expect our team to have all of those files locally saved. I saw some discussions with similar issues but felt they weren't fully resolved. Please advise, thanks!
-Paige
- Walter
Dropbox Staff
Hi there paigekat - sorry to hear you're having issues with this.
When you say that the search doesn't work, are you referring to the website, the desktop app or the mobile app perhaps?
Could you maybe send us a screenshot of a sample file and how it looks on your end so that we can have a visual too?
Any additional information is more than welcome, Paige.
Yes, thank you! Mainly the website. However, I have the same problem on the Desktop app, unless I have previously opened the file locally on my laptop. Not sure if this screenshot is helpful at all, but here is an image of me searching for a term that I know is contained in many of the PDFs within the respective folder. I appreciate your help!
- Nancy
Hi Paige! Hope you don’t mind if I jump in.
When saying the search is only working for files that you open and close on your desktop app, I’m guessing these files were previously set as online-only, correct?
As for the website, can you test this via another browser instead and let me know if you keep seeing the exact same thing?
I don't mind at all. Yes, correct, those files were previously set to online only.
I just tried another web browser and unfortunately had the same issue. I should note that a separate organization digitized our materials, returned them to us on a flash drive, and then I uploaded them to our Dropbox. When I open each file individually on my computer (outside of Dropbox) the OCR does work, and I am able to search and find words throughout the document. thanks!- Nancy
Thanks for the extra details, Paige! Appreciate it.
Since these files were digitized by another organization indeed and not natively within Dropbox, can you test something else with me?
What I want you to do is scan a document with our Dropbox scanner option instead. Are you able to successfully search for its contents after that by using the OCR functionality?
