Find text across all documents in a Case File, with results shown by document and page.
Whenever you see the magnifying glass icon next to a document in the Documents List, it means TrialPad can access the document’s OCR (optical character recognition).
Although you can’t search within a single document exclusively, TrialPad displays detailed search results showing every document and page where your term appears.
How to Search Across Documents
Use the Search bar at the top of the Evidence List to find specific words or phrases.
- Scroll to the top of the Evidence List to reveal the Search bar.
- Type your search term. As you type, TrialPad searches file names.
- Press Search or Return (depending on your keyboard setup) to search the full text of every document in the Case File.
- Documents containing your search term will show a red circle with a number indicating how many times the word appears.
- Tap a document to view the results. You’ll see a list of pages and the number of matches on each one.
- Tap a page to open it. TrialPad highlights every instance of the searched word.
About Search Performance
When you type in the Search bar, TrialPad first filters file names. For example, typing “interr” quickly narrows the list to show all interrogatories. After you press Return, TrialPad searches the full OCR text within each document.
Recent updates use Apple’s built-in PDF search, which provides more accurate results—especially in scanned or skewed documents—but can be slower and use more memory.
To improve performance and prevent crashes:
- Search within specific folders instead of the entire case.
- Avoid combining multiple scans into one large PDF.
- Use a scan resolution around 150 DPI. Higher settings don’t improve readability but require more memory.