How to use PDF 'Search' or 'Find' facility
NB Single inverted commas are used below to make the text more readable - they are not required when making a search. However double inverted commas have a particular
function - see below)
Open the document you want to search. It will open in either your internet browser's (Firefox, Safari, etc.) window or in an Adobe Reader window depending on
how your computer is setup.
If it opens in a browser window (most likely) look for 'Search' , 'Find' or a magnifying glass icon in the menu bar at the top of the page. Clicking on any of
these opens a search box. If none of these are visible look for an icon which opens 'Menu'. Clicking on this opens more options and should contain a 'Search',
'Find' or a magnifying glass icon to click on. In some browsers you need to right click on the page and a menu will appear - click on 'Find' and a search box will open.
If it opens in Adobe Reader click on the magnifying glass icon in the menu bar at the top of the page.
- If what you type into the search box is not present in the document the box turns red
-
If the spelling of the word(s) you are looking for have changed over time use the part that has not. The previous spellings of Glanyafon (part of Dduallt estate)
were Glan y'afon, Glan'r afon and Glanrafon . If you search for 'Glanyafon' you won't pick up the other spellings. So search using 'Glan' or 'afon'
- Avoid plurals - 'Watkins' will not find 'Watkin' but 'Watkin' will find 'Watkins'
- The search is not case sensitive so it doesn't matter if you use capital letters or not
- The search is not sensitive to circumflexes, umlauts, etc. So 'Ty' will find 'T?'. It will also find 'gravity' and so on
- Hyphens used to make compound words are ignored: so 'Williams-Ellis' is treated the same as 'Williams Ellis'
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If you search on more than one word use double inverted commas but take care that no other words could split up what you put in. For example: if you search for "Watkin Wynn"
you won't get hits as his name was 'Watkin Williams-Wynn'. Better to search on 'Watkin' or 'Wynn' (or even 'Wyn'). The use of double inverted commas is helpful in reducing
the number of hit you will get - so, 'Tafarn Trip' will get far more (the search is for Tafarn or Trip) than "Tafarn Trip" (Tafarn and Trip)
- If in doubt use the shortest number of letters as possible, but 'ty' will get a lot of hits!
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When you've finished with one search move back to the top of the document using the slide bar on the right-hand side and click the cursor at the top of
the page. This ensures the next search starts at the top of the document - this prevents confusion as to what you've covered.