Scan and OCR a PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC -

Do you ever have an image in your PDF that you need to OCR and make text? Adobe Acrobat has a feature called Scan and OCR which can do just that. This is useful for when you have a scanned image or poor-quality PDF.

Best practice

Try to avoid using images of text as this is a direct violation of accessibility guidelines. This is why the Scan and OCR feature is useful.

Video Overview of how to use the Scan and OCR feature in Adobe Acrobat

Text Overview of how to use the Scan and OCR feature

Select the scan and ocr tool
Select recognize text in this file
Select recognize text

Select the scan and ocr tool

Select recognize text in this file

Select recognize text

How do I test to make sure that it worked?

The best method to ensure that your Scan and OCR worked is to try and copy and paste the text into another program. This will tell you that the OCR took place and will allow you to check for accuracy.

Are there any better OCR programs?

Adobe Acrobats OCR tool is not the best when it comes to accuracy. If you are using OCR for textbooks or high quantities of documents, id refer you to check out Abbyy FineReader. Lucky for you – I have a bunch of videos about this program too.