Try to select a word
Drag across a line of text in your PDF reader. If the words highlight one by one, the page has text. If a box is drawn over the whole page, or nothing happens, it is a picture.
OCR PDF
Turn a scanned PDF into one you can search, select, and copy text from. The tool reads the words on each page and adds them as an invisible layer, so the pages look exactly the same. Everything happens in your browser, so nothing is uploaded.
Drag and drop your PDF here, or
Up to 100 MB. Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.
What is OCR for PDF files?
OCR stands for optical character recognition. It looks at a picture of text, works out which letters and words are in it, and writes them down as real text a computer can use.
A scanned PDF is a stack of pictures, one per page. You can read it, but your computer cannot, so search finds nothing and you cannot select a sentence. OCR fixes that by reading each page and placing the words it finds exactly over the matching words in the picture, in invisible ink.
The result is often called a searchable PDF. It looks the same as before, but search, select, copy, and screen readers all work, and file search on your computer can find the document by its contents.
Why use our OCR PDF tool
- ·Free. No signup, no page limit, no watermark.
- ·Runs in your browser. Scanned contracts, IDs, and bank letters never leave your device.
- ·Your pages stay as they are. The scan is not compressed again or redrawn. Only an invisible text layer is added.
- ·23 languages. Including Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, Tamil, and Sinhala.
- ·Text you can take with you. Every page's text is shown after the run, ready to copy or save as a .txt file.
How to tell if a PDF needs OCR
PDFs saved from Word, a browser, or most other programs already have text, and OCR adds nothing to them. Scans and phone photos do not. Three quick ways to tell:
Search for a word you can see
Press Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) and search for a word that is clearly on the page. No match on a word you can read means the page is a picture and needs OCR.
Add it to this tool
The tool counts the pages that already have selectable text as soon as you add the file. If it says no selectable text yet, every page is a scan.
How to make a scanned PDF searchable
- 1
Add your scanned PDF
Drag the file onto the box or click to pick it. It stays in your browser and is never uploaded. The tool checks each page and tells you how many already have selectable text.
- 2
Pick the language
Choose the language the document is written in. The right language makes a big difference to accuracy, because the reader uses it to recognize letters and whole words.
- 3
Run OCR
Click Make PDF searchable. Pages that already have text are skipped unless you turn that off. A progress bar shows how many pages have been read, and you can cancel at any time.
- 4
Download the searchable PDF
Save the new PDF. It looks exactly like the original, but you can now search it, select words, and copy them. The text from every page is also shown below, ready to copy or save as a .txt file.
How to get better PDF OCR results
Most OCR mistakes come from the scan, not the reader. If the confidence score is low, check these first:
- ·Scan at 300 dpi. Small print needs enough pixels. 300 dpi is the usual setting for OCR. Below about 200 dpi, small letters start to blur together and are misread.
- ·Keep pages straight and the right way up. Crooked pages read worse, and sideways or upside down pages barely read at all. Turn them the right way with Rotate PDF first. This tool reads each page the way it is shown, so a page rotated in the PDF is read correctly.
- ·Pick the right language. A French letter read as English loses its accents and gets more words wrong. The tool reads one language per run, so for a mixed document pick the main one.
- ·Use clear, high contrast scans. Dark text on a light, even background reads best. Faint photocopies, shadows from a phone photo, and colored backgrounds all lower accuracy.
What OCR cannot do
- ·Handwriting. The reader is trained on printed text. Neat block capitals sometimes work, but joined-up handwriting mostly comes out as nonsense.
- ·Editing the document. OCR makes the text searchable and copyable, but the page itself is still a picture, so you cannot change the words in the PDF. Copy the text out from the box under the tool instead.
- ·Tables and layout. Words in tables are found and searchable, but the copied text is plain lines, so columns and cells are not kept.
How to OCR a PDF in other apps
Adobe Acrobat Pro. Open the Scan & OCR tool and choose Recognize text. Acrobat adds a text layer the same way this tool does. The free Acrobat Reader cannot run OCR.
Google Drive. Upload the PDF, then right-click it and choose Open with, then Google Docs. Drive runs OCR and creates a Google Doc with the text, but the PDF itself is not made searchable and the layout is usually lost.
The command line. OCRmyPDF is a free program that uses the same Tesseract engine as this tool. Run ocrmypdf input.pdf output.pdf to make a searchable copy. It can also straighten crooked scans, which this tool does not do.
Who uses OCR on PDFs
- ·Office workers with scanned paperwork. Contracts, invoices, and letters that went through a scanner are just pictures. After OCR you can find a name or an invoice number with Ctrl+F instead of reading every page.
- ·Students and researchers. Scanned book chapters and old papers become searchable, and quotes can be copied instead of typed out by hand.
- ·Anyone building a document archive. Search tools on your computer, and services like Google Drive, can only find the words in a PDF when it has a text layer. OCR makes old scans show up in search.
- ·People who use screen readers. A screen reader cannot read a picture of text. With a text layer added, the words can be read aloud.
Only need the text from a single photo or screenshot? The image to text tool reads it straight from the image file.
Frequently asked questions
How do I make a scanned PDF searchable?
Add the PDF to the tool above, pick the language it is written in, and click Make PDF searchable. The tool reads the text on each page and adds it to the PDF as an invisible layer. Download the new file, and search, select, and copy will work. Everything runs in your browser, so the file is never uploaded.
Why can't I select or search the text in my PDF?
The pages are pictures of text, which is what a scanner or a phone scanning app makes. A picture has no letters in it, only pixels, so there is nothing to select or search until OCR reads the words and adds them as text.
Does OCR change how my PDF looks?
No. The original pages are left exactly as they were, and the text is added in invisible ink on top, lined up with the words in the picture. The file usually grows by only a few KB per page.
Which languages can it read?
23 languages: English, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Sinhala, Spanish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese. It reads one language per run. The first time you use a language, its data (about 3 MB) downloads once and is saved in your browser.
Why is the OCR text wrong in places?
Usually because of the scan: blurry, faint, crooked, or low resolution pages are misread more often. Picking the wrong language also causes mistakes. The tool shows a confidence score after it runs. Below about 60%, expect a fair number of errors. A cleaner scan at 300 dpi helps most.
Can it read handwriting?
Not well. The reader is built for printed text. Neat capital letters sometimes come through, but ordinary handwriting mostly does not.
My pages are sideways or upside down. What should I do?
Turn them the right way up with the Rotate PDF tool first, then run OCR. The tool reads each page the way it is shown, so a page that displays correctly after rotating is read correctly too.
What does Skip pages that already have text do?
Pages where at least 40 characters of selectable text are found are left alone, because they are already searchable and running OCR would add a second copy of the words. Turn it off if the existing text is garbled or wrong and you want the page read again.
Can I edit the text in the PDF after OCR?
No. The page is still a picture, with invisible text added so you can search and copy. To work with the words, copy them from the text box under the tool or download them as a .txt file.
Can I OCR a password protected PDF?
Yes, if the PDF opens without a password and only limits things like printing or copying. If it needs a password to open, remove the password with the Unlock PDF tool first, then add the unlocked file.
How long does OCR take?
A few seconds per page on a typical computer. The tool reads up to four pages at once, depending on how many processor cores your device has, so long documents go faster than one page at a time. Phones and older computers are slower.
Are my PDF files private?
Yes. The text reader runs inside your browser, so the PDF and its text are never uploaded to a server. The only downloads are the reader itself and the language data, which come from this site and contain nothing about your file.