How do I make sure my interview transcript is scanned correctly for OCR?

Scan your document at 300 dpi for the best text recognition. Choose the correct language for the text before running OCR. Make sure the pages are image-only; OCR won't work on pages with existing text.

Searchable Interview Transcripts in Adobe Acrobat — How-to & AI prompts

AI prompts

1 way to ask · copy any one

CDecide — “help me choose”I have piles of scanned interview notes and one long transcript and I need to pull evidence for…+

I have piles of scanned interview notes and one long transcript and I need to pull evidence for my recommendation tomorrow. I’m new to turning scans into searchable text and worried I’ll miss a quote that undercuts our proposal. Tell me the fastest, reliable way to convert these files into searchable text, how to tag evidence to recommendations, and one quality check to trust the output.

when the reply comes backPush once: ask it to sharpen the weakest part, and to say what it assumed.

How to do it

the tool · the steps · what to avoid

1
Open the scanned PDF file in Adobe Acrobat.
2
Go to the Tools menu.
3
Select Scan & OCR from the tools list.
4
Click Recognize Text and choose In This File.
5
In the settings panel, ensure PDF Output Style is set to Searchable Image.
6
Click Recognize to start the OCR process.
7
Save the PDF after OCR is complete.
Best practiceFor best OCR accuracy, scan your documents at 300 dpi and ensure the images are clear before running OCR.

In the appWith the API

After OCR completes, you can search, copy, and highlight text in your previously scanned PDF.

This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.

Glossary

words on this page

OCROCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It is technology that turns images of text into real text you can search and copy.ExampleAfter scanning a paper invoice, OCR allows you to copy the vendor's name from the image.

Searchable text layerThis is an invisible layer of text added to an image-based PDF, allowing you to search for words in the document.

DPIDPI means dots per inch, and it tells you how clear an image is when it is scanned.ExampleA scanned photo saved at 300 DPI will usually contain more detail than the same photo at 72 DPI.

Who does this

3 roles

ArchivistResearch LibrarianRecords Manager

FAQ

about this task

Scan your document at 300 dpi for the best text recognition.
Choose the correct language for the text before running OCR.
Make sure the pages are image-only; OCR won't work on pages with existing text.

A searchable text layer is an invisible layer of text that Acrobat adds to a scanned PDF. It matters for interview transcripts because it lets you search for any word within the document, even if it was originally just an image. This makes it much faster to find specific information without reading everything.

If your scanned interview transcript is blurry, the OCR might not work well. Blurry images make it hard for the software to recognize letters correctly. To get better results, try to rescan the document at a higher quality, ideally 300 dpi. If rescanning is not possible, you might need to manually review and fix any recognition errors after running OCR.

Acrobat gives this error because the page you are trying to OCR already has real, selectable text on it. The Scan & OCR tool is designed to work only on pages that are images, not on pages that already contain digital text. If you want to change existing text, you might need to use a different editing tool instead of OCR.

When you search a regular PDF, you are looking for text that was created digitally, like text typed in a word processor. The Scan & OCR tool is for PDFs that are images of documents, like a scanned paper. It adds a hidden text layer so you can search those image-based PDFs. Without OCR, you cannot search text in a scanned document, only in a digitally created one.

Searchable Interview Transcripts

When to use it

AI prompts

How to do it

Glossary

The real tasks

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FAQ

Sources

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When it fails