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Make a scanned PDF searchable (OCR)

Can't select text in a PDF that came from a scanner or phone camera? Recognise it, and the document becomes searchable, copyable and ready to listen to.

FreeNo sign-upIn your browser

How it works

  1. 1Choose your scanned PDF or drop it here.
  2. 2Quillo finds which pages are scans; press Recognise text.
  3. 3Download the searchable PDF.

How PDF OCR works

A scanned PDF is really a set of page photos: you cannot search it or copy a sentence. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the letters in those photos and places each word where it sits, as an invisible text layer.

The page image does not change; the document looks the same, but Ctrl+F now finds words and text can be selected and copied. Pages that already contain text are left alone.

Recognition reads English and Turkish on this page; the German and Spanish pages read those languages. It runs entirely in your browser. Recognition files are downloaded once on first use.

How to make a scanned PDF searchable

You might also need

PDF to textGet the text of a PDF as plain text.PDF to WordTurn a PDF into editable Word.Listen to PDFHear any document read aloud.Compress PDFShrink files for email and chat.

Questions

How do I make a scanned PDF searchable?
Drop the PDF here and press Recognise text. In the file you download you can search, select and copy text.
Does it read handwriting?
It works well on printed text. For handwriting, "Read a hard page" in the Quillo app reads the page with Quillo Ai.
Are my files uploaded to a server?
No. Processing happens in your browser, on your own device; your files are never sent to Quillo servers or anywhere else. Nothing is left behind when you close the page.
How long does it take?
A few seconds per page on a computer, a little longer on a phone. Progress is shown page by page.
Can I get the text into Word?
Yes. Give the searchable PDF to the PDF to Word tool for an editable Word file.

Your files are processed in your browser and never sent to our servers.

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