Apple notes search in PDFs from scanner - not working

[Steve28]

I have a brother scanner I use to scan things I want to keep for reference. I used to use Evernote, but am considering moving to Apple Notes. One issue I have noticed is that anything I scan is not searchable in notes. Here's what I do:

1. Scan to PDF from the brother scanner - saved to shared network drive
2. Create new note in Apple Notes on my mac
3. drag PDF from the shared drive onto Apple Notes

At this point, the first page of the PDF shows in apple notes just fine. However, using the search function of apple notes will not locate that note using any of the text that's in the PDF.

If I select the PDF in the note and hit spacebar to invoke quicklook, I can select and copy the text, so it's not like apple can't read the PDF.

According to apple's documentation, this is supposed to work in notes.

Does this work for anyone else? Note: I am specifically talking about PDFs that were scanned using a scanner.

 

[TorbenIbsen]

I was an Evernote user for several years. About 3000 notes in nearly the max 250 notebooks. Left Evernote when they started reprogramming the app.

Apple Notes turns out NOT to be a real alternative. You will miss a lot of things you like. And it is very difficult to escape from Apple Notes again. There is no native export feature.

There are two Apple-only alternatives. Both are much, much better than Evernote. I have tried them both.

The very big solution is go move to Devonthink 3. This will give you a new way of doing lots of things on your Mac. It has one extra, big asset: It can actually read all your Evernote notes directly and it will keep your existing folder structure when it imports everything. - There is a ton of features. This also means that you actually have to read the book/Userguide BEFORE you start using Devonthink 3. - I had issues with synchronization to iPhone/iPad so don't go to Devonthink if you also use mobile. - On-time purchase of a license for each Mac.

The other Apple-Only app is "Keep It". Called "Keep It Mobile" on iPhone and iPad. - This is the app you wish Apple Notes were. You can create folder structures in 9 levels. You have a concept called "bundles" which is a way to group notes across the folder structure, so it actually adds a whole extra dimension to your archive. There are no max-limit on notes or folders.

"Keep It" does an OCR reading of everything and index things directly on the device. I have many receipts from shops (things with a warranty). They have been scanned with Swiftscan on my iPhone or iPad. Some have been scanned directly by "Keep It Mobile" into a note. I can search for specific words/text in all those scanned documents.The search and find feature is very advanced.

There are many good features in "Keep It" which you do not have in Evernote. It has a very user friendly approach. My 68 year old non-IT wife has it as her favorite app because of that. Very "Apple-like". You can "share" and "print to PDF" and "drag" directly into "Keep It" and you can open/edit/save many file types from within "Keep It", just like I could in Evernote.

"Keep It" is subscription based, but worth the price. From Apple Store(s) - It can import .enex files, so you will have to export folder by folder from Evernote if you want to keep that structure. - But you might not want to keep that structure because organizing, metadata and search is so much better than in Evernote. So think a bit before you move 1:1 into "Keep It". - I think this app is what you really want. Synchronization to iPhone/iPad is rock solid.

 

[Steve28]

@TorbenIbsen Thanks. I had heard of DevonThink before and some corworks swear by it. I think for my needs it's overkill and I would rather stay in the free realm if possible.

The main thing I use EN for is just a place to dump all of the stuff we get in paper form that I need to keep. Over the years, this has dwindled to a trickle, but it's still useful for things like property tax statements, receipts I need for reference, etc. So mostly, I want a place to digitize things so I can search later. I have a handful of folders just to keep things somewhat straight (health, car, home, dog, etc.). I used only their free tier.

Going forward, I can capture most things with the scan documents feature on the phone, since I can do that 'in the field' and we get so little in the mail anymore.

However, I have stuff in EN going back to 2008, almost all of it is scanned PDF documents. EN lets me search them, but Apple Notes appears to not (even though it says it should). So Apple Note might be a no-go for me if I can't get it sorted.

 

[hg.wells]

So just did a quick test, if the document was created as a pdf in word or a similar program it’s searchable in Apple notes. It sounds like your Brother printer is just scanning in the text as an image and creating the pdf file.

Does your printer have any additional settings for scanning text to pdf, that may include OCR?

 

[Steve28]

So just did a quick test, if the document was created as a pdf in word or a similar program it’s searchable in Apple notes. It sounds like your Brother printer is just scanning in the text as an image and creating the pdf file.

Does your printer have any additional settings for scanning text to pdf, that may include OCR?

Right - it's specifically PDFs via the scanner. Notes can read PDFs that scanned as text just fine. And my concern is the 15 years of PDFs I already have. Going forward I will rarely use the scanner.

If I open the scanned PDFs in preview, it recognizes the text (just like any other image). My question is specifically about Notes' ability to do the same and make it searchable. Is the fact that it doesn't seem to be working a bug or "as expected"?

 

[chown33]

What happens if you open a PDF in Preview.app, Save as a new PDF, then open the new PDF in Notes? Is the text searchable then?

What if you add a single simple annotation, say an arrow, in Preview.app, then Save as a new PDF. Adding a graphical annotation will modify the PDF content, but not in a way that affects searching text.

This is just a test of viability. If it works for one file, then it's possible that an automation or shortcut could be made that will apply it to multiple files.

 

[mk313]

I tried the same thing with my HP multifunction device & get the same results. PDF is searchable when opened in Preview, but put it into notes & it is no longer searchable. Actually open the PDF that is embedded in Notes & I can then search it, but not unless it is opened.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I have image PDFs with text and in many cases Quicklook or Preview can't really read the text properly. Some of it is OK but a lot of words aren't. In some of those cases Preview manages to find the word. In others it doesn't. For at least some of the dodgy words that Preview does find…Spotlight doesn't.

In another test, I copied and pasted, from a web page, a PNG image of a book page directly into Notes. So…this note had never been on my Mac other than in the clipboard. Notes search found it by one of the words in it.

 

[HDFan]

I use Devonthink for scanned documents via a ScanSnap Scanner and ScanSnap software. Works well. Generally documents are searchable, if not you can tell Devonthink to OCR them.

I find Evernote's interface much easier to use than Devonthinks' so for everything else - web clippings, mail messages I want to save, I use Evernote.