OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDF Searchable
Add a searchable, selectable text layer to scanned PDFs with OCR, keeping the original pages. Your files are never uploaded to our servers. ToolkitPoint processes them on your own computer, so confidential documents stay with you.
Processed in your browser. Your files are not uploaded.
How to use OCR PDF - Make Scanned PDF Searchable
- Choose a scanned document from your device.
- Pick the document language and the rendering resolution (220 DPI suits most clean office scans; 300 DPI helps with small type).
- Leave "Skip pages that already have selectable text" ticked when processing mixed digital and scanned packets.
- Press the start button to run optical character recognition and download the searchable file.
Worked example
Load a 10-page scanned lease agreement at 220 DPI in English. After processing, pressing Ctrl+F for "termination" in any viewer highlights every occurrence across the scan, and the status line reports the exact word count added per sheet.
When to use this tool
- Making scanned contracts, invoices, receipts and official letters searchable with Ctrl+F.
- Copying clauses or reference numbers out of a flat paper scan without retyping them by hand.
Important limitations
Accuracy depends on scan quality; handwriting is not recognised. The text layer embeds Unicode fonts supporting Latin, accented characters, Cyrillic, and Chinese; complex shaping scripts like Arabic or Devanagari are not currently shaped.
Frequently asked questions
What does optical character recognition do here?
It renders each scanned page to a high-resolution canvas, recognises the printed words with Tesseract, and writes an invisible, accurately positioned text layer directly over the original page image. The visual appearance stays identical, while Ctrl+F search and text copy work normally.
Are my original page images altered or degraded?
No. The original page appearance is preserved and the recognised words are placed in a transparent text layer aligned to the bounding boxes of each word.
How accurate is the character recognition?
Clean, upright printed scans at 200 to 300 DPI recognise with high accuracy. Skewed pages, low-contrast thermal receipts, decorative display fonts or handwriting produce errors, so always verify names, dates and figures against the visible scan.
Which languages are available?
English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Dutch. The first run downloads the selected language traineddata file (around 10 MB), which your browser caches for subsequent runs.
How does it handle multi-column pages or tables?
Tesseract segments text blocks automatically and places each recognised word at its exact horizontal and vertical coordinates on the sheet, so searching highlights the right column.
Is my confidential scan uploaded anywhere?
No. Recognition runs locally inside your browser using WebAssembly, so contracts, medical records and bank statements stay on your device.