Hands-on PDF guides
How to make a scanned PDF searchable with OCR
Recognize text in a scanned PDF, correct the OCR results, and make a searchable PDF that keeps the original page images.
Open the searchable PDF toolTurn a scan into a searchable PDF
Use an English invoice you have scanned and note its invoice number. Try selecting the number in the original file, then use it to test the OCR result.
Open Make PDF Searchable and choose your scanned PDF. Select English or Simplified Chinese plus English to match the document, then start recognition.
Compare low-confidence lines with the original page and correct mistakes in fields such as the invoice number and amounts. Generate the searchable PDF to add selectable text while keeping the original page images.
Open the generated PDF and search for the invoice number you noted. Select and copy the match to check that every character agrees with the scan.
Check the result
Check blurry pages and lookalike characters closely. The page image can look right even when a search or copied text reveals an OCR error. Pages that already contain text may be skipped so their existing text is kept.