How to turn a scanned PDF into searchable, copyable text
Published 2026-11-08
A scanned PDF is just pictures of pages, so you cannot search, select or copy any text. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the pictures and recovers the words.
Two useful outputs
- OCR to text gives you the recognised words to copy, edit or translate.
- Searchable PDF keeps the original scan and adds an invisible text layer, so Ctrl+F and copy work while the page looks the same.
Steps
- Open OCR or Searchable PDF and drop your scan, or a photo of a document.
- Choose the language of the document. This is the single biggest accuracy factor.
- Start recognition. The first run downloads the language data, later runs start faster.
- Copy the text or download the searchable PDF.
Getting accurate results
- Scan at 200 to 300 DPI.
- Keep pages straight and well lit; rotate sideways pages first.
- Use black text on a plain background if you can.
- For mixed Chinese and English documents choose the combined language.
Limits
OCR is never perfect. Handwriting, tiny print and decorative fonts are hard. Always proofread important numbers and names.