How to make a scanned PDF searchable (OCR)

How to tell if your PDF is a scan

Open it and try to select a sentence with your mouse, or press Ctrl+F and search for a word you can see. If nothing highlights, the pages are images and you need OCR.

Run OCR on your PDF

1. Open OCR PDF and add your scanned file.
2. Choose the document's language. This matters a lot for accuracy.
3. Leave on the option to straighten crooked scans if your pages are slightly tilted.
4. Click Run OCR and download the searchable PDF.

Get better results

• Pick the right language. The wrong one produces garbled text.
• Start from a clear scan. Sharp, straight, well-lit pages read much better than blurry photos.
• Tilted pages: keep the straighten option on.
• Pages that already have real text can be skipped, which saves time.

What the result looks like

The pages look exactly the same as before. The text layer is invisible and sits behind the picture, so you can now search, select and copy, but the text is only as accurate as the scan. Proofread anything important.

What to do next

Once a document has a text layer, tools that read text start to work on it: PDF to Markdown, Summarize PDF and Translate PDF all need real text, so OCR is the first step for scans.