Hi,
1. It is the normal behaviour of the WordPress search bars. You can “override” that via using this custom code.
2. If the values show up, they are present in the post meta database for sure. There must be a post revision or something still present, which kept these values.
The only way is to not use the {get_values} feature, but enter them manually. In an upcoming release there will be an “exclude” parameter, which will allow excluding values from the fields.
3. I tried a few phrases, by opening text based PDF files, but it seem to work okay on my end. I tried the phrase “MNDC” from this PDF, and it show up for me in the results: https://i.imgur.com/sWPHpgw.png
It is possible of course, that some words might not get picked up, but it should get as much as possible.
