How to use OCR in Adobe Acrobat
Most freelancer probably had to go through this at some point in their career, a client either gives you a sheet of paper with the text on it and gets no digitalized version of it, or he gives you the text as an image. You could install some open-source OCR programm or even pay for one, but why would you do that when you can do it in Acrobat?
If you scan with Acrobat
If you are using Acrobat 8, I’d recommend that you scan your text directly from the software. You should check the “Make searchable (Run OCR)” checkbox, this will run the OCR programm and you’ll have your text ready right away (not available in previous versions of Acrobat). Acrobat 8 will also rotate your file automatically if it can’t run the text recognition.
To scan from Acrobat, chose: File > Create PDF > From Scanner
Don't forget to hit the "Make Searchable" checkbox
If you want to do text recognition on an image
To run OCR on an image a client sent you (or if you can’t scan with Acrobat…), it’s quite easy too. Just open the file in Acrobat (File > Create PDF > From File) and run the OCR programm by going to Document > OCR Text Recognition > Recognize Text Using OCR.
Text recognition on a file
Options available when recognizing text: language, Output style,...
OMG it worked! I can select text!
nice one… just tryed it an d it works perfect! thx
great article. I will bookmark this
Acrobat does not even list my scanner in the pull down menu to enable me to use the OCR feature…..can anyone help me??
Worked like a charm, thanks for sharing! I just wish I had thought about this sooner. Life would be so much easier for me if I can still convert my old scanned documents into searchable pdf files. Oh well, better late than never.
can you tell me how to have the text not appear in frames?
If you’re
If you’re looking at a really big job involving files organized in a sloppy fashion, we typically use a product called Cvision PDF Compressor. It’s designed to compress files, but it OCR’s in the process. Their licenses are rather expensive, but worth it in the long run b/c OCRing in Acrobat requires constant babysitting and takes an extremely long time.