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Editing Text In PDF documents

rgaetos
Registered: Jun 23 2010
Posts: 3

Is there a way to edit the text from scanned documents. I can use the typewritter feature, but is there a way for Acrobat to recognize the text so that I can edit it rather than having to retype the whole document to correct a few items?

try67
Expert
Registered: Oct 30 2008
Posts: 2398
You will need to OCR the document first.

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rgaetos
Registered: Jun 23 2010
Posts: 3
I did OCR the document, but it still does not allow me to make any corrections.
try67
Expert
Registered: Oct 30 2008
Posts: 2398
Did you use the Text Touch-up Tool?

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daka630
Expert
Registered: Mar 1 2007
Posts: 1420
OCR:
--| Searchable Image
--| Searchable Image (Exact)
--| "Formatted Text & Graphics (Acrobat Pro 8)
--| "ClearScan" (Acrobat Pro 9)

First two leave a hidden layer of OCR output characters.
With Professional you can use Examine Document. An option lets you view the OCR output.
For all practical purposes, there is no "editing" of this in Acrobat.
You could save as to text. Put the text into a word processor & clean it up.
Then output a new PDF.

The other two, basically, do:
--| Recognize the character? Replace it with a renderable font character.
--| Not sure? Make a "suspect" - user can edit - again, have a renderable character.
--| No idea? Leave a bitmapped image behind.

Minor touch up edits to the renderable characters is possible; and, time consuming.
With ClearScan, one must change the special, made by Acrobat, font to something available on the local machine (that does not have license restrictions that might prevent Acrobat from using it).

Be well...

Be well...

rbogie
Registered: Apr 28 2008
Posts: 432
use (experiment with) redaction tool
TonyPotter
Registered: Feb 1 2010
Posts: 85
Sounds someone has asked the simliar question before. ^_^ OCR application is essential if you want to make scanned PDF editable. I recommend PDF OCR Terminal, which can freely help you do that. Google would help you find that.

I will try my best to help you in PDF converison fields, objectively and Neutral.