SharePoint 2019 Indexing PDF files

Question

We are running SP2019 and have some PDF files which for some reason SP doesn't index. Other PDF files it does. I can't figure out why not. How can I got about troubleshooting this?

Answer 1

Hi @reuvygroovy ,

Go to Search service application > Crawl Log > URL View > search by the URLs of those PDF files, could you verfiy if they have been crawled? If not, run a full crawl and re-verify it when completed. Are those PDF files included in the content source which is crawled?

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Answer 2

No. It indexes the files but I still can't search for text within the file.

Answer 3

I have the exact same issue. The content (scanned) PDF is crawled, but it can't be found using search in SharePoint 2019.

Answer 4

To my understanding, there are different formats in which a PDF file can be created, such as PDF/A-1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDF/A)

Seems to us SharePoint has problems with certain formats when trying to index them

Answer 5

There is an article I've found that described this behavior. Basically, PDF created by scan (machine) or other automated solution will put in the PDF:Title field some text that doesn't correspond to the Document name or the file name of the PDF. As it turns out the crawler does pick up that title and overwrites what is found from SharePoint.
https://www.cloudappie.nl/confusing-titles-and-pdf-files-in-sharepoint-search/