[ken in texas]

... need the Adobe subscription to “find” and “select” and “copy and paste.”

You're modifying the document, so you may very well need some PDF specific software. Nothing special is needed to scan the document for a specific character string.

[zeestephen]

Re: “You're modifying the document, so you may very well need some PDF specific software.”

No - just searching for key words, and excerpting brief passages for my notes.

There is actually an Adobe pop-up that says I have to subscribe in order to search.

I presume it's some kind of lawyer thing.

I receive, or link to, other PDF files every month, including Adobe files from other sources, and they scan and excerpt just fine with Windows 10.