How to create a searchable PDF file

Have you ever opened a PDF file only to find that none of the information is searchable? Like this particular file, I’m unable to find any words within the document because it’s just a scanned image. However, if you have Acrobat X Std. or Pro it’s easy to change your document into a fully searchable file when I click OK on this dialog. Or, I can access the same command from the Tools pane, Recognize Text panel and select the In This File command.

To apply OCR, which stands for Optical Character Recognition, the original scanner resolution must be at least 72 dpi or higher. In the Recognize Text dialog you can set various capabilities like OCR language and PDF Output Style. There are three different PDF Output Styles you can select, I’m going to go ahead and use Searchable Image. This will ensure that the text is searchable and selectable, for cut and paste operations. This particular PDF Output style will also place an invisible text layer over the original image.

At this point you can also downsample your file to reduce the size if necessary.

The RecognizeText command now will convert your image to searchable text so that you can now search and find words in your document. Your scanned image is now fully searchable and much more usable. The Recognize Text command can also be run on multiple files or folders using the In Multiple Files command located under the Recognize Text panel.

Requirements: Acrobat X Std. or Pro.