How do I use full-text search (OCR)?

What's in it for you

Instead of trying to remember a contract title, you search by content: a clause, a name, a phone number, a particular deadline. Full-text search finds any word in any PDF in your account — including scanned contracts that have no digital text layer of their own.

How it works — two routes

A. Search across all contracts (contract list)

Open the contract list (left-hand navigation → Contracts / „Verträge").

Next to the search field („Nach Verträgen suchen") there's a dropdown set to List („Liste") by default — that filters results by contract titles and fields.

Switch the dropdown to Text.

Type your search term — ContractHero now searches the entire full text of every contract PDF in your account.

Each hit shows a preview of the matching passage.

B. Search inside a single contract

Open the contract and go to the Documents tab („Dokumente") — the default view after opening.

In the top left of the PDF viewer, click the search icon (magnifying glass).

Type your term — matches are highlighted in the PDF and the arrow buttons jump you from one to the next.

Common questions

Does full-text search work on scanned contracts?
Yes. ContractHero runs OCR to turn scanned PDFs into machine-readable text. With very poor scan quality or handwritten notes, recognition can be incomplete.

Which languages are covered?
Text recognition covers a broad range of languages — see the OCR language pack article for the specifics of what your account recognises.

How fast is it?
Effectively real time. Even across several thousand contracts, results usually appear in under two seconds.

Do my permissions apply to full-text search?
Yes. You only see hits in contracts your role gives you access to — search does not bypass category or team restrictions.

Can I search for clauses or phrases?
Yes. Type the phrase and ContractHero looks for it as a connected occurrence. For multi-part clauses, quotation marks help enforce the word order.

I found a term that isn't stored in any field — now what?
Full-text search shows you the passage in the PDF. From there you can take the value into a structured field — see how contract analysis works, in the related articles below.

Why am I getting no results?
Full-text search matches text, not meaning. Check the spelling and the exact character sequence — the term has to match what's written in the document, otherwise you'll get the wrong results or none at all.

Good to know

“List” vs “Text”: List searches contract titles and master data only — fast, and right when you know the contract name. Text searches the entire document body — unbeatable when all you remember is a fragment of a clause.
The magnifying glass does more than search. It highlights matches in colour inside the PDF, which helps when you need to see exactly where a clause sits.
Full-text search and AI analysis are complements. The AI extracts structured fields; full-text search finds everything in between.
Combine with saved views. If you search for the same terms regularly, save a custom view with the right filters and run full-text search on top of it.

Updated on: 09/04/2026

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