How to use OCR text recognition on a PDF online
Easy apply optical character recognition (OCR) to your PDF by following these steps:
- Drag and drop your PDF into the grey-dotted drop zone or click the Select a file button at the bottom of the drop zone.
- Choose a PDF document that you want to add optical character recognition to, so that you can easily search and interact with text.
- Once the file is uploaded, Adobe Acrobat will be able to use optical character recognition to scan the text in your document.
- Sign in to your Adobe Account to share your PDF or download it.
Use our OCR tool for PDFs for free
High-quality character recognition
Our online Acrobat optical text recognition tool lets you easily search your text and even highlight any recognised sentences or words.
Make PDF text easy to search
OCR lets Adobe Acrobat use text recognition to search for words or key phrases saving you time.
Improved accessibility
Optical character recognition lets you use screen readers, greatly increasing accessibility.
No need to install extra OCR software
It may sound complex but don't worry, you can access our suite of Adobe Acrobat tools on a variety of browsers. That means no downloads or installs to use our optical text recognition.
Trusted security and privacy
As creators of the PDF format, you can trust Adobe to keep your files safe. We use encryption to protect your data, and delete any uploaded files if you're not signed in.
The best online optical character reader
We've been innovating the PDF format since its incept, which means you can trust the quality of our tools.
Questions? We have answers.
OCR can convert any static PDF image into scannable text. To check if it's worked, simply try searching for a phrase in the document. Try our Adobe Acrobat Pro seven-day free trial to use Adobe OCR technology in other image file types, including JPG, TIFF, and PNG files.
Our Acrobat Pro free trial also lets you access other PDF editing features, too. Edit your PDF, increase security with PDF passwords, collect signatures, and convert file types to and from PDF, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents.
Acrobat OCR online tool recognises text in a PDF document. You can make text editable, searchable, and selectable from other formats, including image file formats like PNG, JPG, and TIFF, through Adobe Acrobat Pro, on our 7 day free trial.
Using the Acrobat Pro free trial gives you access to advanced PDF features. You'll be able to edit PDF text and images and convert to and from PDF, including converting text files (TXT) and Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word documents.
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- Sign in to try 25+ tools, like convert or compress
- Add comments, fill in forms and sign PDFs for free
- Store your files online to access from any device
