I scanned 50 pages and now I can not search or copy text from the PDF. How do I make it searchable?
How can I make a scanned PDF searchable and selectable?
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Trevor Patel October 15, 2026
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You need OCR (optical character recognition). It reads the picture of the page and adds a hidden text layer.
In Acrobat: Tools > Scan & OCR (or Enhance Scans) > Recognize Text > In This File. Select the language and run it.
Without Acrobat there are free and paid OCR programs that can process a entire PDF in one go. Some scanners and scanning apps also create searchable PDFs directly, and that is the best place to turn it on.
Quality tips: scan at 300 dpi, keep pages straight, and set the correct language before you start. Check a few pages after OCR by copying text. Small print and handwriting do not recognize well.
Acrobat's Recognize Text did it in a few minutes and search works. Thanks.