Understanding and Creating Full-Text Searchable Documents
If you are a member of a SmartVault account with a Professional plan, when you upload a Microsoft Office document, such as a Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file, you can search for words contained in the contents of these documents using the SmartVault full text search capabilities available in Professional plans.
PDF documents can also be searched for using words contained in the contents of the document if the PDF document has been created as a searchable PDF.
Note: Full text search capabilities are available only for in accounts with a Professional plan. If you would like to upgrade to a Professional plan in order to use SmartVault full text search capabilities, you can upgrade you current plan to a Professional plan at any time. For more information about upgrading your account, see
“Upgrading Your Account” .
Any Microsoft Office document, such as a Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint file, is automatically indexed after it is uploaded into an account with a Professional plan. After the indexing process completes, you can search for the documents by using key words contained within the body of the document as your search term.
However, in order to search for a PDF document by using words contained within the body of the document, the PDF document must be created as a searchable PDF document.
Most PDF documents created from applications, such as from Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat, are automatically created as PDF documents.
However, PDF documents created by a scanner may or may not be a searchable PDF document.
If the PDF document created by a scanner was created using the scanner’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, then the PDF document is created as a searchable PDF document.
If the PDF document was simply scanned as an image without using the scanner’s OCR software, then the PDF document is not a searchable PDF document and you cannot search for the document using key words contained in the body of the document.
If you are creating PDF documents by scanning documents using a scanner and you want to be able to search for the documents using SmartVault full-text search capabilities, ensure you are using the OCR capabilities of your scanner software when you scan the documents.
If you use a TWAIN-compliant scanner to scan documents and create PDF files, for more information about how to create a searchable PDF file using your scanner’s OCR capabilities, consult your scanner documentation.
If you use a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner to scan documents and create PDF files, ensure that you have configured the SmartVault ScanSnap profiles for your Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner to include OCR capabilities. For more information about how to configure SmartVault ScanSnap profiles to include OCR capabilities, see
“Creating SmartVault ScanSnap Profiles for Fujitsu ScanSnap Scanners” .
