How do I recognize text in a scanned PDF receipt?

Open your scanned receipt in Acrobat. Go to 'All tools' > 'Scan & OCR' > 'In this file'. Select your page range and the language of the text. Click 'Recognize Text'. Acrobat will add a hidden text layer to your receipt.

Unsearchable Receipt Scans in Adobe Acrobat — How-to & AI prompts

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CDecide — “help me choose”Our finance team rejects expense reports because scanned receipts aren't readable. I have a…+

Our finance team rejects expense reports because scanned receipts aren't readable. I have a stack of receipts due for submission by [deadline=Friday] and I can't afford repeated back-and-forth with finance. Diagnose whether this is a scanning workflow issue, OCR settings, or naming conventions. Recommend the fastest change that will get receipts accepted this week and one policy change to prevent the backlog recurring. I will not manually retype totals unless absolutely necessary.

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.
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Click Recognize to start the OCR process.
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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 PDFA searchable PDF is a document where you can look for words, even if it started as a scanned image.ExampleEven though it was a scan, the searchable PDF let me find every instance of 'warranty' 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.

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FAQ

about this task

Open your scanned receipt in Acrobat.
Go to 'All tools' > 'Scan & OCR' > 'In this file'.
Select your page range and the language of the text.
Click 'Recognize Text'. Acrobat will add a hidden text layer to your receipt.

Acrobat's text recognition (OCR) is designed for image-only pages. If a page already contains real, selectable text, the OCR process will not run. It's important to check if your PDF page is an image before trying to apply OCR, as it only works to convert image-based text.

For the most accurate text recognition (OCR) in your scanned documents, you should scan them at 300 DPI. While 72 DPI is the lowest setting, a higher DPI like 300 helps Acrobat read the text more clearly, leading to better results when making your document searchable.

If your scanned receipt is blurry, the text recognition (OCR) might not work well, or it could make many mistakes. OCR relies on clear images of text to convert them correctly. To get better results, try to rescan the receipt at a higher quality, ideally at 300 DPI, and make sure the original scan is not blurry.

Yes, you can automate making many scanned receipts searchable. Adobe provides a PDF Services API that includes an 'OCR PDF' operation. This allows you to programmatically send your scanned documents to the service, and it will return PDFs with a searchable text layer, which is great for bulk processing and archiving.

Unsearchable Receipt Scans

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