How to make a scanned PDF searchable
Updated: · Agah Emre SÖZEN
A PDF from a scanner or a phone camera is really a set of page photos. You cannot search it, copy a sentence or have a screen reader read it. To make a scanned PDF searchable you need OCR (optical character recognition): the text is recognised and added to the page as an invisible text layer.
OCR PDF
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Steps to make a PDF searchable
- 1Open quillo.tr/ocr-pdf.
- 2Choose your scanned PDF or drop it on the page.
- 3 shows which pages are scanned. Press Recognise text.
- 4When recognition finishes, download the searchable PDF.
Does the page look different afterwards?
No. The page looks the same; only an invisible text layer is placed on top. Pages that already have text are left alone, so in a mixed document only the scanned pages are processed and the file does not grow needlessly.
How accurate is the recognition?
On a cleanly scanned printed page most of the text is recognised correctly. Handwriting, very small type and skewed or shadowed photos raise the error rate.
If you are scanning the paper yourself, use the document scanner in the app: it straightens the edges, cleans the shadow and saves the PDF as searchable right away.
Frequently asked questions
- Which languages are recognised?
- On the English page the tool recognises English and Turkish text. For German or Spanish documents, switch the site language: those pages recognise German and Spanish.
- Will the searchable PDF be accepted by upload portals?
- A searchable PDF is a standard PDF and can be uploaded anywhere a PDF is accepted. If the portal has a size limit, shrink the file at quillo.tr/compress-pdf.
- Is my document uploaded to a server?
- No. Text recognition runs in your browser. The recognition files are downloaded once on first use; your document is sent nowhere.
OCR PDF
Try it now: free, no account, and your file never leaves your device.