OT: Firefox 26 and PDFCreator 1.7.2 - non-searchable text

Did you try to use from Firefox File -> Print -> Print to File?

It's work well in Linux.

Many thanks.

Unfortunately there is no option in the Windows variety to print to file. I can "Save as" but that's not really what I want.

The other way is install driver for any PostScript. Print to .ps file and convert to pdf.

You can print to the printer driver "PDFcreator" in the print menu.

hamilton

Perhaps I wasn't clear, but that is precisely what I am doing and while I get a nice PDF printout file, it is no longer searchable.

A while ago this route most definitely provided a searchable PDF, but doesn't any more.

Many thanks.

Would the .ps file contain any character information?

The issue is that the header and footer of each PDF page that contain the URL and date etc are searchable but the text in the actual page isn't.

I use PDF995, and the resulting file is searchable. It is a shell for Ghostscript, and looks like a printer to the computer. I use it with Firefox 26.0. I simply print the page, and have PDF995 selected as the default printer.

Yes. It's works. I'm just checked.

I have a similar issue. I use CutePDF to output a PADS schematic, but it's not searchable. I think PADS outputs characters as line/vector things, as if it was doing a Gerber file.

CutePDF and Foxit Reader together allow searches of pdf's created from things like Word and Firefox web pages.

Altium Designer have a very good PDF writer. Very easy for navigate through components, nets etc.

I just tried the "print driver" but opened that result pdf file in Adobe.

It is searchable.

I also tried with CutePdf and it too was searchable.

To be clear, I "printed" the CutePdf.com web page into a .pdf file from both PDFcreater (1.7.2) and CutePdf (3.0).

Both files are searchable inside of Adobe X (10.1.8.24).

hamilton

Many thanks - I shall look into this.

CutePDF is 3.7.

If you don't mind DjVu format, you can convert and OCR a document at

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Open a PDFCreator - PDF print monitor window. Click on Printer | Options | Format | Security tab

Is the box "Use security"at the top ticked? If it is, and the section "Disallow user to"..."Copy text and images" box is also ticked, then untick it, or untick the "Use security" box. I'm just wondering if disallowing copying also disallows searching.

I really appreciate all the help here. I have come to the conclusion that this must be Firefox thing as there are some words on the page in question that are selectable and others seem to be converted into a graphical format.

I starting to wonder if this might well be a print CSS issue, as the webpage itself is entirely searchable.

I was looking at a Atmel pdf file in Firefox.

They now have their own pdf viewer.

Inside the browser, in their home grown pdf viewer, I could not search that pdf file.

I highlighted some text and hit Ctrl-c, hit Ctrl-f and I see the normal (?) search window at the bottom of the screen.

I insert that selected text (Ctrl-v) and it could not find the text I just highlighted !?!

But if I view this same file in Adobe, it can find everything.

Go figure.

hamilton