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OCR PDF: Make a Scanned PDF Searchable

Turn scanned PDFs into searchable ones: an invisible text layer makes the text findable and copyable.

or drag and drop here, or paste with Ctrl+V / ⌘V

Accepted: PDF

This PDF is password protected

· Enter its password to open it. It stays in your browser.

Convert on our server?

If you continue, the file is uploaded over an encrypted connection and converted on our server. You can keep using the site meanwhile. The original is deleted as soon as it is converted; the result is kept for 7 days so you can download it, and you can delete it at any time. Files are never shared or used for anything else.

Your images are processed in your browser and are not uploaded. Privacy details

How to use: OCR PDF

  1. 1 Choose or drag in one or more scanned PDFs.
  2. 2 Choose the language of the text (and whether English words also appear).
  3. 3 Select the pages to recognise – pages that already contain text are skipped.
  4. 4 Click Make PDF searchable and download the searchable PDF (and the text, if you like).

About this tool

A scanned contract, a photographed receipt, an old document from the archive: in a scan every page is just a picture, so you cannot search it, select a sentence or copy a figure. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the letters in the picture. This tool recognises the text of every page and adds it as an invisible layer exactly over the words – the pages look precisely as before, but now Ctrl+F finds words, you can select and copy text, and search engines and document systems can index the file.

Recognition supports English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian (Latin), optionally combined with English. Pages that already contain text are left untouched. Everything runs on your device: the OCR engine is downloaded once from this site and your documents are never uploaded.

Frequently asked questions

Will my pages look different afterwards?

No. The original pages are kept; the recognised text is added as an invisible layer exactly over the printed words.

How accurate is the recognition?

Clean scans at 300 dpi give very good results. Blurry photos, handwriting and unusual fonts produce more mistakes; “More accurate” takes longer but reads small text better.

How long does it take?

A few seconds per page on a computer, somewhat longer on a phone. The first time, the engine and language data (2–8 MB) are downloaded.

Is my PDF uploaded?

No. Recognition runs in your browser and nothing is sent to our server.

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