Thanks for all these helpful answers! Yes I do in fact (unfortunately) mean the shortcuts that Willy is referring to... I always thought I was being a responsible folder user by using shortcuts instead of copying the same files across multiple folders, but alas :( Other than using data analysis soft...

I've searched the other topics for a possible solution but to no avail: I use the Search Folder function quite frequently, but I've only just noticed that it doesn't recognize PDF shortcuts that are in the folder. Other than going through one by one to recopy the original document back into the fold...