Distributing PDF Document Collections

After you’ve established your PDF document collections, you can make them available to your coworkers in a couple of ways. One of the most popular methods is to back up one or more of the collections (depending upon the number of PDF files they contain) on CD-ROMs that you can send out or make available for use from a central archive. Another method available to users whose computers are part of a company-wide network is to copy the PDF document collections onto a volume on the network server and share that volume with all the users who need to access its information.
The biggest potential problem with making PDF document collections available on a network is that together they can eat up a lot of disk space, depending upon how many PDF files they contain. Of course, this isn’t a problem when you distribute collections on individual CD-ROMs, although it does mean that you have to be smart about how you classify and categorize the collections on each CD-ROM because they can only be mounted and searched individually. This means that you can’t peruse the various collection folders at one time as you can when they’re all located together on a shared volume of a network. You may wonder about making PDF document collections available from a corporate intranet or Internet Web site. Unfortunately, as of now, the only way to make PDF document collections searchable on Web servers is with the Adobe PDF iFilter, a free downloadable DLL (Dynamic Link Library) that enables searching PDF files using Microsoft’s specifications for filtering text. Of course, this is no solution if your company doesn’t happen to use a version of the Microsoft Internet Information Server and Microsoft Index Server (both of which have to be in place for the PDF iFilter to work). For more information on the Adobe iFilter and to download it, go to the following Web address:
www.adobe.com/support/downloads

Adding document information (metadata) and date filtering to your searches

Acrobat doesn’t automatically include document information (otherwise known as metadata) as part of the search. Nor does it include an equally powerful search feature called date filtering (which enables you to match documents in a collection that were created or modified within a range of dates). As described previously, you get these options only if you choose to refine your Basic Search or choose to have these Advanced options displayed by default in the Search PDF pane when you initiate a search. As you can see, you can now search for the metadata that you so assiduously entered for each PDF document in the collection (at my gentle insistence), as well as the aforementioned date filtering technique, all in the same search. To add metadata and date filtering to your search criteria, follow these steps:

1. From the drop-down list on the left under Use These Additional Criteria, select the metadata criteria (Title, Subject, Author, and Keywords) you wish to search for. In addition to Document Properties information (metadata), you can also choose Filename, Bookmarks, Comments, JPEG Images, and XMP Metadata (a format that makes it easier to share metadata between documents created in different Adobe programs) as search criteria from the Use These Additional Criteria drop-down lists.
2. From the drop-down list on the right under Use These Additional Criteria, select either Contains or Does Not Contain.
3. Enter the words or names to search for in text box below the Use These Additional Criteria drop-down lists.
4. To add date filtering, choose either Date Modified or Date Created from the Use These Additional Criteria drop-down list.
5. From the drop-down list to the right, select Is Exactly, Is Before, Is After, or Is Not.
6. Click the drop-down list below the date criteria drop-down lists and select a date on the calendar that appears.

After you click a date, the calendar closes and the date appears in the drop-down list box.
By adding the date filtering fields (Created or Modified After or Before) in the Use These Additional Criteria area, you can also refine a search by the approximate date the particular PDF files in the collection were originally created and/or modified. This makes it possible to find a document that shares essentially the same metadata as others in the collection but was created or last modified on a particular date.

Refining your search

Sometimes, your first search for a particular term results in too many matching files pulled from the PDF document collection, and you find that you need to refine your search further narrow the search results. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click the Refine Search Results link near the bottom of the Search PDF pane to display Advanced Search options in the Search PDF pane. Note that when you refine your search in this manner, the options you choose are applied to the previous search results.
2. Replace or further refine the search term in the Search Within the Previous Results For text box.
3. Select a new option, if desired, in the Return Results Containing dropdown list, and then select or deselect the Whole Words Only, Case-Sensitive, Proximity, or Stemming check boxes to further refine your search criteria.
4. Click the Refine Search Results button to begin your new search.

The Advanced Search options that appear in the Use These Additional Criteria section of the Search PDF pane provide a means of using metadata and date filtering as search criteria. These powerful search options are covered in the next section.
By default, Acrobat displays its Basic Search options when you choose Edit➪Search or press Ctrl+F (Ô+F on Mac) to initiate a search. The Advanced Search options are displayed only when you choose Refine Search Results in the Search PDF pane after performing a basic search. To have Acrobat display the Advanced Search options rather than the Basic Search options in the Search PDF pane when you initiate a search, choose Edit➪Preferences or press Ctrl+K (Ô+K on Mac) to open the Preferences dialog box. Click Search in the list box to display the Search options. Select the Always Use Advanced Search Options check box, and then click OK to close the Preferences dialog box. Note that when you choose this option, you won’t have access to the Basic Search options until you turn off this feature by deselecting the check box in the Search section of the Preferences dialog box.