Create an index for a collection

When you build a new index, Acrobat creates a file with the .pdx extension and a new support folder, which contains one or more files with .idx extensions. The IDX files contain the index entries. All of these files must be available to users who want to search the index.

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Dialog boxes for the index-creation process


  1. Choose Advanced > Document Processing > Full Text Index with Catalog, and then click New Index.
  2. In Index Title, type a name for the index file.
  3. In Index Description, type a few words about the type of index or its purpose.
  4. Click Options, select any advanced options you want to apply to your index, and click OK.
  5. Under Include These Directories, click Add, select a folder containing some or all of the PDF files to be indexed, and click OK. To add more folders, repeat this step.
    Note: Any folder nested under an included folder will also be included in the indexing process. You can add folders from multiple servers or disk drives, as long as you do not plan to move the index or any items in the document collection.
  6. Under Exclude These Subdirectories, click Add, and select any nested folder that contains PDF files you do not want to be indexed. Click OK and repeat, as needed.
  7. Review your selections. To make changes to the list of folders to be included or excluded, select the folder you want to change and click Remove.
  8. Click Build, and then specify the location for the index file. Click Save, and then:

    • Click Close when the indexing finishes.

    • Click Stop to cancel the indexing process.

    Note: If you stop the indexing, you cannot resume the same indexing session but you don’t have to redo the work. The options and folder selections remain intact. You can click Open Index select the partially finished index, and revise it.
    If long path names are truncated in the Include These Directories And Exclude These Subdirectories options, hold the pointer over each ellipsis (...) until a tool tip appears, displaying the complete path of the included or excluded folder.

Indexing Options dialog box

Do Not Include Numbers

Select this option to exclude all numbers that appear in the document text from the index. Excluding numbers can significantly reduce the size of an index, making searches faster.



Add IDs To Adobe PDF v1.0 Files

Select this option if your collection includes PDFs created before Acrobat 2.0, which did not automatically add identification numbers. ID numbers are needed when long Mac OS file names are shortened as they are translated into DOS file names. Acrobat 2.0 and later versions automatically add identifiers.



Do Not Warn For Changed Documents When Searching

When this option is not selected, a message appears when you search documents that have changed since the most recent index build.



Custom Properties

Use this option to include custom document properties in the index; only custom document properties that already exist in the PDFs you index are indexed. Type the property, make a selection from the Type menu, and then click Add. These properties appear as a search option in the Search PDF window's additional criteria pop-up menus when you search the resulting index. For example, if you enter the custom property Document Name and choose the string property from the Type menu, a user searching the index can then search within the custom property by selecting Document Name from the Use These Additional Criteria menu.

Note: When you create custom fields in a Microsoft Office application in which the Convert Document Information option is selected in the PDFMaker application, the fields transfer over to any PDFs you create.


XMP Fields

Use this option to include custom XMP fields. The custom XMP fields are indexed and appear in the additional criteria pop-up menus to be searchable in the selected indexes.



Stop Words

Use to exclude specific words (500 maximum) from the index search results. Type the word, click Add, and repeat as needed. Excluding words can make the index 10% to 15% smaller. A stop word can contain up to 128 characters and is case sensitive. Certain common words, such as the, and, and to are already excluded from index searching, so it is not necessary to add them yourself.

Note: To prevent users from trying to search phrases that contain these words, list words that aren’t indexed in the Catalog Readme file.


Structure Tags

Use this option to make specific leaf-element tag nodes searchable in documents that have a tagged logical structure.

Note: The Custom Properties, Stop Words, and Tags settings apply to the current index only. To apply these settings globally to any index you create, you can change the default settings for custom fields, stop words, and tags in the Catalog panel of the Preferences dialog box.


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