PDF Indexing is working on Windows 11 (even with the standard PDF indexer), however, you can only search for file contents via File Explorer and not via Search / Taskbar Search.
Windows 11 Windows Search not searching or Indexing PDFs
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Anonymous
Brand new Dell XPS laptop with Windows 11. It will not search text within PDF files. From looking on the internet seems like there are lots of problems Windows Search in Windows 11 which did not exist in Windows 10. Including not searching/indexing contents of PDF files, which is critical for me.
Has ANYONE been able to search within PDF files on Windows 11?
Please don't suggest re-indexing, have done 6 or 7 times. And, yes indexing settings are set to index contents of PDF files.
Windows for home | Windows 11 | Files, folders, and storage
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
2022-03-12T03:41:25+00:00 Hi MattBK,
Sorry I misunderstood you.
You can open the relevant settings in the Search Options, as shown below (if your explorer does not have "Search options", you can try any search, and the option will appear above the search results).
I wish the above will be helpful to you. Please feel free to let me know how it goes, and I will do my best to help you.
Best Regards,
Mosken - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist
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Anonymous
2022-03-10T04:59:21+00:00 Respectfully, this is spectacularly, incredibly wrong Microsoft windows search and its predecessors have supported searching within files, including PDFs, for years. It certainly did (and does) in windows 10. Indeed, in windows 10 and 11 one of the options is to have Windows Search search within the file. The default windows search setting for PDF is "index file properties and content." And search does in Win 11 (at least for me) search fine within .docx and xlsx docs and I assume many other files.
But PDF searching is broken in Windows 11. Unbelievable that MS would do this. MS needs to fix this. First step is to acknowledge that this is a bug and a severe one in the OS.
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Anonymous
2022-03-09T03:50:27+00:00 Hi MattBK,
Sorry I misunderstood you.
Windows search does not support searching the contents of a file, but I found relevant information, some applications used to open PDF files support such a function, you can try to search about it(sorry, due to security reasons, I cannot provide specific software or Link).
If you have a strong demand for the function you describe, you can give feedback in the "Feedback" application(launched by "Win" + "F") which win10 built in, and the developers will consider and try their best to help solve the problem.
I wish the above will be helpful to you. Please feel free to let me know how it goes, and I will do my best to help you.
Best Regards,
Mosken - MSFT | Microsoft Community Support Specialist
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Anonymous
2022-03-09T02:45:34+00:00 Thanks. Have tried all that. Does not help. My os build is win 11. 21H2. Build 22000.527. Am up to date.
To be clear, on your system can you search for text within pdf files? I can find files by name. But cannot search text within any pdf file, as I can with windows search in windows 10.