How to Find and Replace Text in Adobe Acrobat DC

Today’s tutorial explains how to find and replace text in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and Acrobat Standard DC.

Acrobat’s find-and-replace tool is similar to Microsoft Word’s find-and-replace tool but offers fewer options. For example, Word lets us find and simultaneously replace all occurrences of a word based on nine parameters; whereas Acrobat’s find-and-replace tool offers four parameters and only replaces one occurrence at a time.

Despite these limitations, Acrobat’s find-and-replace tool is invaluable when editing PDFs—particularly long PDFs. If you just need to find text, Acrobat’s Advanced Search helps you find partial or whole words in one or multiple PDFs. Visit “How to Search Multiple PDFs with Adobe Acrobat’s Advanced Search” for a full tutorial.

For simplicity, the steps below refer to finding and replacing one word. However, you can also use these steps to find and replace multiple consecutive words and number strings.

Find and Replace Text in Adobe Acrobat DC

1. Select the Edit tab.

2. Select Find.

3. Enter the word that you want to find in the Find text box.

4. Select the down arrow to open the options menu.

5. Select a parameter (if necessary): Whole Words Only, Case Sensitive, Include Bookmarks, or Include Comments. You can select multiple parameters by selecting the down arrow again.

6. Select Replace with.

7. Enter the replacement word in the Replace with text box.

8. Select the Next button to find the next occurrence of the word.

9. Select the Replace button to make the replacement. If necessary, edit the word in the Replace with text box before selecting the Replace button. For example, you may have to alter capitalization to match sentence positioning.

10. Continue to select the Next and Replace buttons until Acrobat tells you that it has finished searching the document.

If you would like to learn more about working with PDFs, check out my other easy-to-follow Adobe Acrobat DC tutorials.

Updated November 18, 2021