Erin Wright Writing

Writing-Related Software Tutorials

How to Find and Replace Text in Adobe Acrobat DC

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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.

This tutorial is also available as a YouTube video showing all the steps in real time.

Watch more than 100 other writing-related software tutorials on my YouTube channel.

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.

Image of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Edit Tab | How to Find and Replace Text in Adobe Acrobat DC

Pro Tip: PC users can type Ctrl + F instead of selecting the Edit tab and the Find option.

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

Image of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Find Panel | How to Find and Replace Text in Adobe Acrobat DC

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.

Image of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Find Panel with the Replace With Option Highlighted | How to Find and Replace Text in Adobe Acrobat DC

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

Image of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Find Panel with text in the Replace With Text Box | How to Find and Replace Text in Adobe Acrobat DC

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

Image of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Find Panel Next Button | How to Find and Replace Text in Adobe Acrobat DC

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.

Image of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC Find Panel Replace Button | How to Find and Replace Text in Adobe Acrobat DC

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

Image of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC All Matches Found Dialog Box | How to Find and Replace Text in Adobe Acrobat DC

Pro Tip: After you replace the first occurrence of the word, you can select the Replace Next button to automatically replace the next occurrence. However, beware of automatically inserting a replacement word with incorrect capitalization for the sentence positioning.

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