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Finding text in a PDF file

You can search a PDF file for a word or any set of characters.

To find text in a PDF file:

Step 1

Type some text in the search field that’s in the toolbar.

If you can’t see the search field, you may need to enlarge the window.

A list of places where the text occurs appears in the sidebar.

Step 2

Click an occurrence of the text in the sidebar.

Preview shows the page where the text occurs, and highlights the text.

To quickly find the section or page with the most matches, select “Group by section” or “Group by page.” The sidebar lists each section or page that contains the search term, sorted by the number of times the term appears. When you click a section or page, Preview displays it and highlights all occurrences of the search term in it. (If your document has a table of contents, “Group by section” is available. Otherwise, “Group by page” is available.)

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