How to make a scanned PDF searchable with OCR
To make a scanned PDF searchable, open OCR PDF, add the scan and choose its language. The recognised words are laid invisibly over each page, so you can find, select and copy them while the page looks the same.
Updated by Team Wrxstack
Steps
- Open OCR PDF and add the scanned document.
- Choose the language the text is written in.
- Wait while each page is read on our servers.
- Download the searchable PDF.
Languages
OCR PDF reads English, Spanish, Hindi, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese and Hebrew. Choosing the right language matters: it is how the shapes on the page are matched to letters.
Getting a good result
Clear, straight scans at 300 dots per inch read best. Photos of paper taken with a phone work too; Scan to PDF turns them into a clean PDF first.
Pages that already contain text are left as they were, so a mixed document is safe to run.