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  2. TECHNOLOGY Q&A

Searching for acrobats

BY J. CARLTON COLLINS

Please note: This item is from our archives and was published in 2013. It is provided for historical reference. The content may be out of date and links may no longer function.

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Q: While looking for a PDF file on the web, I tried including pdf, .pdf, and “.pdf” in my search criteria, but I still found mostly websites instead of PDF documents. Is there a way to search the web for PDF documents only?

A: When searching the web using Bing or Google, you can search specifically for PDF files only by including the phrase filetype:pdf in the search criteria. When using Yahoo!, include the phrase originurlextension:pdf in your search criteria.

Note: You can also search for Excel, Word, or PowerPoint files the same manner by substituting xlsx, docx, or pptx for pdf in above search phrases. (The suffix pdf refers to Adobe Acrobat’s Portable Document Format, while xlsx, docx, and pptx refer to Microsoft’s latest Excel, Word, and PowerPoint 2010/2007 file formats, respectively.)