Make a scanned PDF searchable
Read the text in a scanned PDF, so you can search it and copy from it.
How it works
- Drag and drop your PDF file below.
- Enter languages found in the document.
- Click Start OCR to download the searchable file.
What this tool does to your file
Optical character recognition reads the pictures of words on a scanned page and works out what they say, producing a PDF whose text you can select, copy and search. The original page image is kept and the recognised text is placed behind it, so the document still looks exactly as it did — what changes is that it now has a text layer where it had none. Accuracy depends on the scan: clean, straight, high-resolution pages of ordinary printed text do well, while faint photocopies, handwriting, heavy skew and unusual typefaces all cost accuracy. It will not be perfect, and for anything consequential the output is worth reading against the original. A PDF that already has real text does not need this tool — the other PDF conversions can read it directly.
What happens to your files
- No account needed — Every tool works as a guest. Signing in raises the limits and keeps your files together, but nothing asks you to register before you get a result.
- It runs in your browser — There is nothing to install and nothing to keep up to date. Files travel to our servers over an encrypted connection, and come back the same way.
- Deleted means deleted — When you delete a file, it is erased from our storage straight away, with no hidden copies or backups. Uploads and results are deleted five minutes after you download your result: always as a guest, and by default with an account.
- Size limits, stated up front — Up to 10 MB per file as a guest, and up to 25 MB signed in. You see the limit before you upload, not after.