FileConvertsFree online file converter
Sign up

Make a scanned PDF searchable

A scanned page is a picture of text: you cannot search it, select it, or copy a line out of it. Recognition reads the words and writes them back into the PDF as an invisible layer sitting exactly over the printed ones, so the page looks identical and the text is finally there.

  1. 1Add the scan
  2. 2Choose the language
  3. 3Check the recognition
  4. 4Download

Every step runs in your browser. Nothing here is uploaded.

What you end up with

The same PDF, with a text layer you can search and copy from.

Recognition is never perfect on a poor scan, so the workflow shows you the text it read before you download. Latin-script languages only: the text layer is written in a standard PDF font whose encoding has no room for Greek, Cyrillic or CJK.

The steps

  1. 1Add the scanned PDF. The page images are kept as they are.
  2. 2Choose the language. Recognition is much more accurate when it knows what to expect.
  3. 3Check the recognition. See the text that was read before you commit to it.
  4. 4Download. The original pages, now with a searchable text layer.

The tools this uses

Each one also works on its own if you only need that step.