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.