If the PDF document is text-searchable (imbedded with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)), in Adobe select ‘Edit’, then ‘Find’ and enter the word(s) you wish to locate in the document. CTRL-F is a short cut to this same feature within Adobe and many other programs used to search for text. Please note, if the PDF document is not text-searchable, searching within the document is not possible. However, there are ways to convert a PDF image document to be text-searchable with Adobe Pro software. Currently, PDF documents cannot be converted to OCR using Adobe Reader.

Within Adobe Pro, select ‘View’ from the drop-down menu, select ‘Tools’, then ‘Recognize Text.' Choose the desired pages to convert to OCR text searchable format. Once the PDF document has been made text-searchable, you will have the ability to search for a word or phrase within a PDF document.