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Viewing a pdf with Preview, I do cmdF to bring up a search box and then enter a word and hit enter.

Basically nothing happens even if it's a word that's obviously present. Sometimes if I smash my hands all over the keyboard and spin around in my chair three times the search suddenly starts working again, but I haven't figured out how to do that trick reliably.

klanomath
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zkurtz
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    I have the same issue. Seems like the recent Sierra update messed up the Preview.app. It is all over the place. – Robert Apr 24 '17 at 18:25
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    +1 same problem here with 10.12.5 no mention of any fixes in 10.12.6 which is a pending update I have for installing: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201222 As an alternative try https://get.adobe.com/uk/reader/ – therobyouknow Aug 14 '17 at 15:59
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    The problem remains under macOS 10.13.1. If anything, it seems to have gotten worse over time. – Janosh Dec 04 '17 at 13:54
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    I'll chime in with macOS 10.13.2. I upgraded from Mavericks to High Sierra and noticed this issue pretty quickly. +1. – Peter Dec 12 '17 at 19:10
  • "spin around in my chair three times the search suddenly starts working" – user7886229 Jun 12 '18 at 22:15
  • Similar issue. When I search "Hello 123" it will highlight random "H" 's and random "lo" 's. Seems like preview doesn't get concept of words. – user7886229 Jun 12 '18 at 22:16
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    I've encountered this issue sporadically for years, probably on the cats releases. It still occurs on Mojave evidently, and is extremely frustrating. – Paul Carey Oct 03 '18 at 23:53
  • Quit Preview and start Preview again worked for me – Jonathan Lin Jan 26 '19 at 01:45
  • Exit Preview. Then delete the container for Preview and restart the app. The container directory is /Users/samiyuru/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview – Makmeksum Apr 01 '20 at 20:55

5 Answers5

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I selected the "Table of Contents" in "View Menu" and searched again. It is working. Check the screenshot:

enter image description here

Anyway, make sure that your PDF contains texts and not the image of some texts.

Amir Latifi
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    just saw this after upgrading to Mojave, not sure if it changed the app or reset my defaults, but this fixed it. – naven87 Sep 26 '18 at 05:26
  • Didn't work for me. – johnk Nov 14 '18 at 09:43
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    Worked for me on Mojave. Weird. – Elliott Mar 18 '19 at 23:06
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    It works if I select "Thumbnails" instead of "Table of Contents"... – ashen Mar 20 '19 at 12:01
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    "Thumbnails" also worked for me. Good grief Apple. – natersoz May 16 '19 at 19:01
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    Actually it is any resetting to the open window that works. When you hear a beep on a search apple is communicating an error and from them on no search will be highlighted until you reset the open window. Closing the window by Cmd-W and then reopening clears the error everytime. Come on apple, fix it. – user30994 Jan 05 '20 at 09:13
  • Initial conditions: Open pdf w/ side bar automatically displayed. "Highlights & Notes" is already selected. THEN Hide the sidebar - w/out selecting 'Table of Contents' - then command-F worked QWERKS: enter find text before hide - does not work. Delete this "pre-hide find text" with sidebar till hidden, then enter find text - works. CURIOUS: ... – radarbob Apr 17 '21 at 19:24
  • ... CURIOUS: It seems like whatever convolutions I go through, if "Highlights & Notes" remains selected find does not work. Apparently selecting "Hide sidebar" seems to de-select "Highlights & Notes". With "H & N" deselected, whatever particular slight of hand used, as long as "H & N" is not selected, FIND works as expected. – radarbob Apr 17 '21 at 19:31
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"BTW, in order to get search working again, you have to close the window (command + w) and reopen on the pdf. Closing Preview all together (command + q) and reopening the pdf doesn't work. This is indeed bizarre." https://discussions.apple.com/message/33927812#33927812

rucativava
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  • This was the only thing that worked. Cmd-W and then open th file again from 'recents'. Good grief Apple. Fix your pdf reading. – user30994 Jan 05 '20 at 09:02
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    I'm running Catalina and this won't fix it for me. – user3574603 Feb 06 '20 at 10:48
  • I really did not expect it, but ⌘+W instead of ⌘+Q, then reopening the file did indeed fix the PDF search (Mojave, 10.14.16) -- takes it from finding nothing with all search strings to finding what you search for. I thought search was broken entirely, but instead there's just this unfortunate bug. In Apple's parlance: not a crasher, but is a regression. There's a chance that it'll be fixed if an appropriate radar is filed. – ajmicek Feb 18 '20 at 14:32
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I've selected File->Export as PDF - reopened saved file and the Search worked. Looks like some encoding issue.

Ilan
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For what it's worth: in my case the problem seemed to appear when opening a pdf from Finder. Opening the same file via File>Open in Preview "solves" the problem. Unbelievable something as simple as this is still not fixed in Catalina

user1694227
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I experienced this issue as well. For me at least, the problem was that I got stuck searching the annotations or table of contents, and so generally didn't find what I was looking for there. I was able to resolve this by clicking on the x box in the search panel to exit out of the old search and go back to searching through the whole document.

Michael Ohlrogge
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