How to make a scanned PDF searchable
- 1Choose the scanned PDF, or drop it anywhere on this page.
- 2Choose Read the pages. The words on each scanned page are recognised.
- 3Download the searchable PDF.
Nothing to install
It runs in the browser you already have, on a phone or a computer. There is no account to make first.
Deleted a day later
Your file is removed from our servers 24 hours after you last touch it, or sooner if you ask.
No watermark
What you download is your document and nothing else, on every plan.
Text you can search, on a scan that looks the same
A scanned PDF is a picture of each page. You cannot search it, select a sentence or copy a figure out of it. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the letters on the picture and lays the words invisibly behind them, in the same places. The pages look exactly as they did, but now:
- Search finds words on the scan.
- Selecting highlights real words you can copy and paste.
- Screen readers can read the page aloud.
- Search tools on your computer can find the document by what it says.
Good for
- Scanned contracts, letters and receipts you need to search later.
- Old documents that only exist as scans.
- Copying a paragraph or a figure out of a scan without retyping it.
What it will not do
- Change the words on the scan. For that, use the scanned PDF editor, which retypes a line in the picture itself. See how to edit a scanned PDF.
- Read handwriting. Only printed text is recognised.
- Read languages other than English, for now.
Tips
- Straight, sharp scans read best. Rotate sideways pages upright first.
- Pages that already have text are skipped, so it is safe to run on a document that is only partly scanned.
Questions
- Will the pages look different?
- No. The text is invisible and sits behind the picture, so the pages look exactly as they did.
- Which languages are read?
- English at present.
- How accurate is it?
- Very good on a clean, straight scan and less reliable on faint, skewed or handwritten pages. Check anything important.
- Can I change the words on the scan too?
- Yes. That is a different job: edit the scanned PDF, which retypes a line in the picture itself.