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MareeMills-8075 avatar image
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MareeMills-8075 asked JadeLiang-MSFT commented

SERVICE - OUTLOOK SEARCH NOT WORKING ON PDF DOCUMENTS

The Outlook Search function is not finding words or numbers that are contained in PDF documents in emails but will locate them in Excel Files. This function use to work until we upgraded to Microsoft 365 (and had a new harddrive put in) Most answers in the community seem quite old and understand it may have something to do with iFilter and my version of Acrobat/Adobe. Any assistance greatly appreciated.

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JadeLiang-MSFT avatar image
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JadeLiang-MSFT answered JadeLiang-MSFT commented

Hi @MareeMills-8075,

Welcome to Q&A forum!

What's the type of your account(pop, imap or exchange), and what's the sepcific version of your client(File>Office account>About Outlook)? Did this issue occur on any specific PDF file or all PDF file in your Outlook messages.

In order to further confirm if the issue is related to your client, if it's possible, please try to search on your web mail to check if it could work normally there, and if you are working with exchange account in cached mode, it's recommended to switch to online mode to test.

If you could search normally in your web mail, the issue may be related to your Outlook client. According to my tests on Outlook 365 Version 2106 (Build 14131.20278), I could search the message with a PDF attachment that contains the main characters"abcd" like below, due to I haven't installed a 3rd-party PDF perviewer tool, I opened this file in edge:
111744-snipaste-2021-07-05-16-24-43.png

Please kindly check if my steps have any differences with yours, if the issue still exists after you performed the same tests, considering corrupted search index may cause it, it's recommended to rebuild your search index to check if the issue has any differences after that(Control Panel>Indexing Options>Advanced>Rebuild>OK>Close).

If your issue has any update, please feel free to post back.


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Hi @MareeMills-8075,
Does this issue have any updates? If it has been resolved, please click "Accept as answer" to mark useful post or share your solution, your action would benefit others who have similar issues. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to post back. Thanks!

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No luck unfortunately ... I am a POP user and this occurs on all emails received by myself that have PDF attachments. WEb mail is also not able to locate documents. I have upgraded my ADOBE and rebuilt my Indexing options but it still doesnt work. Any help greatly appreciated.

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Hi @MareeMills-8075,

Thanks for your update, please kindly understand here we mainly focus on general issues on Outlook desktop client , considering the issue could be reproduced on your web mail, the issue may be more related to your mailbox instead of Outlook desktop client, and some troubleshooting methods in Outlook may not affect it(such as rebuild windows search index etc.), in this case, it's recommended to contact your mailbox administrator or account support directly to check if there are any searching issues on your mailbox.

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Microsoft themselves are telling me that Outlook does not have the capability to search for words or numbers within PDF attachments which is why I came to the community. Very frustrated right now.

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Hi @MareeMills-8075,

Thanks for your reply, and sorry for inconvenience caused to you. I'm still researching it with you.

Due to I could search the pdf file normally on my outlook client and outlook web mail, it seems to I couldn't reproduce your issue with my account. In order to avoid the impact caused by our different accounts, if possible, could you please add a outlook.com account on your Outlook and test there? According to my tests, it always could work normally in outlook.com account on outlook client and web mail.

Also, have you checked the client version with mine? In order to further research your issue and perform more relevant tests on my environment, could your please provide us with your specific client version?

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Yes, using that method it locates the numbers and words in a PDF. What does that tell you about my desktop OUtlook that we use daily ?

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Hi @MareeMills-8075,

About Outlook version, I just would like to perform more targeted tests with same Outlook client version with yours.

However, according to your description, I noticed that you could search normally when you add the outlook.com account in your Outlook client, is it right? If so, it further confirms that the issue may be related to your account itself as I mentioned above, it's recommended to contact your mailbox administrator to check your mailbox.

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