Making a PDF searchable (text recognition)
Android · quillo.trUpdated:
Where: Tools › Scan & add › Make searchable; document menu (⋮) › PDF tools and signing › PDF tools › Make searchable.
Recognises the text of a scanned PDF, or one made from photos, and adds an invisible text layer on top of the page. The page looks the same, but the document can now be searched in other programs too and its text can be selected and copied. The text is recognised on your device and the document is not sent anywhere. It is free.
- 1In Tools tap "Make searchable" and choose the document.
- 2 finds the scanned pages and recognises their text page by page; progress is shown on screen. Pages whose text is already selectable are left alone.
- 3The result becomes a new document with the "(searchable)" suffix. If the document's text is already selectable, says so and does not create a new document.
Tip: reads scanned documents aloud without this tool too (see Scanned PDFs and photos). This tool is for making the file searchable outside as well.
Web (quillo.tr): Tools › Make searchable. Turkish, English, German and Spanish are recognised; the recognition files are downloaded once on first use. It also works without an account at quillo.tr/ocr-pdf.