PDF SEARCH: search for words in pdf documents

[GMolnar]

Having the ability to open pdf's and mark them up is amazing and big thanks to the developers for this feature. However, when handling even modest size pdf files, not having the ability to search for a word is major drawback in the usability of this tool. It would be great to add this - similar to many free pdf readers.

[Jon]

Thanks for submitting an idea to the Mozilla Connect community! Your idea is now open to votes (aka kudos) and comments.

[ukjoe]

Search would be great.   Or at least there could be a warning that search does NOT work in pdfs as at the moment it seems to but does not.  Thanks,

[GMolnar]

I would like to give an update on the Search function inside a pdf document. When you open a pdf file in FireFox, i found that you can click on the main menu (3 horizontal lines at the upper right hand corner) and click on "Find in Page" and then a Search bar opens at the bottom of the page where you can enter Words or Phrases exactly like you would when you looked for something on a Web page. It works. So, there is a Seach function, it is just not obvious or easy to find, but it works perfectly. For new users, it should be "more in your face" obvious when you open a pdf, it should appear, but nevertheless it works perfectly, thank you coders and developers doing this for us, users. It is much appreciated. 🙂

[Weisarom]

re GMolnar on 4/4/25: the search function you describe does *not* work for me. It will not search the PDF at all. This is a crucial ability that I am astounded is missing.

[GMolnar]

Hi, I hear you. I work with pdf's every day and the search function is critical. When  I found this "workaround" (the "Find in page" function in the top right hand menu), it has worked for me on all vector type pdf files, but not on the image type pdf file. A vector type pdf is generated for example from a word document, and an image type pdf is generated for example from an image/picture/scan of a document. it still works for me for my work flow and the type of pdf files I work with, but of course it would be fantastic to have OCR (optical character recognition) function and make it work on ALL pdf files including image type files.

[Weisarom]

It turns out that when doing a Print to PDF, a searchable PDF file is printed out as an image PDF due to something about fonts on the page not being supported - if I understood the explanation elsewhere, if the page uses non-supported fonts, the printing engine just generates an image PDF, which can't be searched.

The workaround I found was to download the PDF file directly if possible (and then it is searchable in Firefox) or just save the web page itself as a full or HTML only web file. This last one doesn't look as pretty as the PDF version but the info is there and searchable.

[GMolnar]

HI @Weisarom, that is absolutely what I found as well: download the pdf as a file, then open it with FireFox and if the file was a vector type pdf (not an image type), the the Menu's "Find in Page" works as a word search. It is a bit of a workaround...and must say, some pdf's are never searchable due to being a scan of an image/photo.