How do I create a Catalog index for my PDF files in Acrobat Pro?

Open Acrobat Pro and go to the 'Catalog' feature, often found in the 'Advanced' or 'Tools' menu. Select the folder or specific PDF files you want to include in your index. Acrobat will then process these files and create a .pdx index file along with .idx files. Once the index is built, you can use it to perform quick searches across all the indexed PDFs.

What is the difference between a regular search in Acrobat and using an Adobe Acrobat Catalog?

Feature Regular Search Acrobat Catalog Search. Speed for many PDFs Slow, searches one by one Very fast, searches all at once Setup No special setup needed Needs to build an index first Content searched Body text, layers, form fields Body text, comments, bookmarks, tags, metadata, attachments

Index Past Materials in Adobe Acrobat — How-to & AI prompts

When to use it

real situations

You have hundreds of old reports and need to find specific information quickly.
Your company stores many client contracts and you need to search for terms across all of them.
You are a student with many research papers and want to find topics in your whole collection.
You have a large collection of scanned documents and need to make them searchable.

AI prompts

2 ways to ask · copy any one

AExecute — “help me do it”Combine the campaign plan, creative brief, and press materials into one searchable PDF and save…+

Combine the campaign plan, creative brief, and press materials into one searchable PDF and save the file to the Campaigns/2026 Q3 folder in SharePoint labeled 'FallLaunch_Master' for quick retrieval.

when the reply comes backPush once: ask it to sharpen the weakest part, and to say what it assumed.

BImprove — “do it better”Make the archive file genuinely useful — merge plans, contracts, and press kits into one PDF,…+

Make the archive file genuinely useful — merge plans, contracts, and press kits into one PDF, add a clickable bookmark list for Plan, Creative, Media, Press, and Contracts, run OCR so text is searchable, then save to Campaigns/2026 Q3 in SharePoint.

when the reply comes backPush once: ask it to sharpen the weakest part, and to say what it assumed.

How to do it

the tool · the steps · what to avoid

1
Place all PDFs you want to include in the search index into a single folder on your computer.
2
Open Adobe Acrobat Pro.
3
Go to the Tools view and select Catalog.
4
In the Catalog panel, click New Index.
5
In the Index Definition dialog, click Add Folder and select the folder containing your PDFs.
6
Optionally, adjust the advanced options for the index (such as custom stop words or include/exclude subfolders) as needed.
7
Click Build to start creating the index.
8
Choose a location and filename for your .pdx index file and click Save.
9
Wait for the indexing process to complete, then click Close when finished.
Best practiceFor best performance, keep your PDF collection and the .pdx index file together in the same folder so users can easily search across all documents.

In the appWith the API

After building the index, use the Advanced Search feature and select 'Use Index' to search across all indexed PDFs at once.

This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.

Glossary

words on this page

IndexA special file that helps you search for words very quickly in many PDFs at once.ExampleThe index allowed me to find every mention of 'project budget' across hundreds of documents instantly.

CatalogThe Acrobat tool that builds an index for searching many PDFs quickly.ExampleThe Catalog tool quickly indexed all project PDFs, allowing instant keyword searches across them.

.pdx fileThe main file created by Catalog that stores information for fast searching.ExampleSearching a folder of documents uses the .pdx file to instantly locate keywords.

The real tasks

the one, listed here

Keep an accurate, searchable archive of past campaign plans and press materials for quick retrieval.

FAQ

about this task

An Adobe Acrobat Catalog is a special index created for a collection of PDF documents. You should use it because it makes searching across many PDFs much faster. Instead of opening each PDF to search, the Catalog lets you search all of them at once, saving a lot of time and effort.

Open Acrobat Pro and go to the 'Catalog' feature, often found in the 'Advanced' or 'Tools' menu.
Select the folder or specific PDF files you want to include in your index.
Acrobat will then process these files and create a .pdx index file along with .idx files.
Once the index is built, you can use it to perform quick searches across all the indexed PDFs.

Yes, an Adobe Acrobat Catalog is very powerful. When you index your PDF collection, the Catalog does not just search the main text. It also covers comments, bookmarks, tags, metadata, and any attachments within your PDFs. This means you can find information in many different parts of your documents.

Feature	Regular Search	Acrobat Catalog Search
Speed for many PDFs	Slow, searches one by one	Very fast, searches all at once
Setup	No special setup needed	Needs to build an index first
Content searched	Body text, layers, form fields	Body text, comments, bookmarks, tags, metadata, attachments

Building an Adobe Acrobat Catalog index is very useful for large document sets because it dramatically speeds up searching. Without an index, Acrobat would have to open and scan each PDF file individually every time you search. The Catalog creates a single, optimized index file that allows Acrobat to find information across hundreds or thousands of PDFs almost instantly.

Index Past Materials

When to use it

AI prompts

How to do it

Glossary

The real tasks

Who does this

FAQ

Sources

Adobe help