In the last five vendor audits, I lost hours turning scans into searchable text and still missed negotiated clauses. S…
Open the scanned PDF file in Adobe Acrobat.
Go to the Tools menu.
Select Scan & OCR from the tools list.
Click Recognize Text and choose In This File.
In the settings panel, ensure PDF Output Style is set to Searchable Image.
Click Recognize to start the OCR process.
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.
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.
A scanned PDF is like a picture of a document. You cannot select or search for text in it because it's just an image. A regular PDF document has real text that you can select, copy, and search. Scan & OCR helps turn a scanned PDF (an image) into a regular PDF by adding a hidden text layer, making it searchable.
This message means the page already has real text on it, not just an image. Acrobat's OCR feature is designed to work only on pages that are pure images. If a page already has text, Acrobat thinks it doesn't need OCR. You cannot use OCR on pages that already have text.
If your scanned contract is blurry or has low quality, Scan & OCR might not work well. The OCR accuracy depends on how clear the text is. Blurry text is hard for the software to read, leading to mistakes in the searchable layer. For best results, always scan documents at a high resolution like 300 dpi to ensure the text is sharp and clear before running OCR.
The purpose of recognizing text in a scanned PDF is to make the text searchable and selectable. When you scan a document, it's saved as an image. By recognizing the text, Acrobat adds a hidden layer of actual text. This lets you search for words, copy text, and use the document like a regular PDF, which is very useful for archiving and finding information quickly.