How to use OCR PDF — Make a Scanned PDF Searchable and Selectable Online
- 1Upload your PDF or document.
- 2Choose the options for this tool.
- 3Download the result — processed on our server and deleted immediately after.
About OCR PDF
A scanned document is just a photograph of paper. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the letters in that photograph and writes them into the PDF as real text, so Ctrl+F finds words, you can copy a paragraph, and screen readers can speak the page.
The recogniser is Tesseract, the open-source engine behind many document systems. Recognition quality follows scan quality: 300 DPI, straight, well-lit pages give the best results.
Frequently asked questions
Does OCR change how the scan looks?
No. The page image is untouched; the recognised text is placed as an invisible layer on top so search and copy work.
Which languages are supported?
English, Hindi, or both together. More can be added on request.
My PDF already has text — what happens?
Pages that already contain text are left alone; only image-only pages are recognised.
Can I convert the result to Word?
Yes — run PDF to Word on the OCR'd file.