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Searchable PDF Mac: How to Make Scanned PDFs Text-Recognizable



How do you go directly to the parts that you want to review in a PDF? Search within the file, of course. But have you ever worked on a PDF not allowing you to search the PDF text, like scanned book, historical documents and newspapers, or academic references? Is there any solution to make this type of PDFs searchable again? Today, we are here to bring the solutions to you.




searchable pdf mac



A searchable PDF is the PDF file composed of 2 layers, image layer and text layer. There in the text layer saves the text content and users are allowed to search for or locate the keyword within the document.


If your PDF is not searchable, it is much likely that the file is not originally generated from documents editors like Adobe, Microsoft Office, it is image-based, which means the text layer is filled with bitmap fonts. These fonts cannot be recognized, therefore the PDF tool cannot do the matching to locate the keywords.


When dealing with PDF files, Adobe Acrobat comes across our minds first, it is always standing on the top of PDF solutions. However, not all of us have installed an Adobe, for one reason or another. Never mind, we can still make PDF text searchable without Acrobat. Here we recommend 2 dedicated PDF OCR programs, both of them will surprise you with even better and more accurate results.


You can try Cisdem PDF Converter OCR, a professional PDF OCR Converter enabling users to convert native and scanned PDFs, even images into searchable PDF, to Word, Excel, PPT, Keynote, HTML, Keynote and so on. It supports batch making searchable PDFs from scanned files, keeping original file quality as well. There won't be any worry about formatting issue and image resolution occurring in the conversion. This powerful OCR PDF Converter can understand more than 200 languages accurately.


No one will turn down a free solution to fix his or her problems, at least, we all want to have a try before paying for an expert. To make PDF text searchable on Mac or Windows, we have free options too. Here we will introduce one way to make PDF text searchable offline line.


Online2PDF offers a wide range of free services for PDF tasks, including editing, compressing, protecting, unlocking, merging, splitting, converting and OCR. Its OCR feature allows users to make PDF searchable in 30+ languages and it supports batch convert.


Google Docs, a part of Google office suite, is an online free tool to open and edit PDF or image easily, it builds in the OCR feature to recognize text from scanned PDF or images. In other words, it can make a PDF searchable for free too.


You are allowed to search PDF text in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC, but if the original PDF file is not searchable, you cannot make it searchable in any Adobe reader. Adobe Acrobat reader can only open, view, fill & sign, comment and highlight, you have to pay for its Adobe Acrobat to get the OCR feature to make a PDF searchable.


It is not as difficult as you thought to make a PDF searchable if we find a tool. You may feel interested in making your PDFs searchable with free tools, but if you want to obtain accurate PDF text and maintain the original PDF formatting, a dedicated PDF OCR program would be the best option.


Want to search a word within a PDF file but not allowed to? You are just searching within a scanned or image PDF. A scanned PDF is in essence an image-based file, all the texts are saved in bitmap image format, you cannot copy, search or modify. To convert a PDF to searchable PDF, you will need to process OCR on the scanned PDF first.


We prefer to use dedicated OCR programs to convert PDF to searchable PDF, because they are far more efficient than other possible solutions, they convert accurately with original formatting retained, they support batch convert PDF to searchable PDFs, they convert fast, they support many languages...


The answer would be Cisdem PDF Converter OCR. It is an application to create and convert PDF files, having an excellent support on different input and output formats. With its OCR feature, you can convert scanned PDF and images to searchable PDF, to editable Word, Excel, PowerPoint, ePub, HTML, Text, Keynote, Pages and RTFD format, no matter your file is in English, Chinese, German, French, Spanish or others.


If you have installed Adobe Acrobat, conversion of scanned PDF to searchable PDF can be even easier, since Adobe can auto detect a scanned PDF and recognize the text with Adobe OCR. Also, being a powerful PDF editor, you can revise the OCR errors or edit the PDF file freely.


Bluebeam is a professional software to create, markup, edit and organize office & project documents, including PDF files. It has a OCR feature to turn scanned PDFs into searchable PDF, offering multiple configuration options to recognize different languages, OCR different document type and optimize OCR result as per your need. There is both single and batch mode that can greatly enhance the efficiency of OCR processing.


Also, there are online free tools available to convert scanned and image PDF to searchable PDF with OCR, the conversion accuracy will be lower than offline professional OCR programs, but still worth a try.


Online2pdf is a free tool to create, convert, organize and edit PDF files. It helps to convert unsearchable PDF to searchable PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Text and ebook format. 20+ file languages can be recognized by this program, but you can only convert 20 pages for free OCR services. One thing that differs online2pdf from Convertio is that, online2pdf allows users to protect, merge and compress the searchable PDF output.


There are 2 types of PDF, native and image-based PDF. A native PDF allows users to search and edit freely, while an image-based PDF, which can be a scanned document or PDF file created from images, cannot be searchable or editable. In this case, we need to convert such a PDF to searchable PDF for searching or editing.


To make a PDF searchable, a searchable PDF converter, be it free or paid, is required for such a conversion. And today, we are going to share 6 best searchable PDF converter in this 2023. For sure, you will find a good way to make pdf searchable even without Adobe Acrobat, as many other users want to.


When looking for a piece of searchable PDF software, many users are expecting a tool that packs in both a searchable PDF converter and a searchable PDF creator. In addition, the price, conversion quality and output format support are key factors for decision making on the searchable PDF tool.


And it seems to many users, Cisdem PDF Converter with OCR is a good choice. It is a efficient PDF tool designed to make PDF searchable in PDF and other searchable/editable formats, also create searchable PDF files from images, Word or other documents. You can find the reasons why it becomes a hit on the market.


PDFMate PDF Converter Professional is an outstanding PDF converter with OCR feature. It allows users to convert scanned PDFs into searchable PDF, ePub, Txt, Doc, HTML. Also, it enables users to create PDF from images.


It has 2 OCR modes, efficiency-priority and quality-priority. Also, when exporting PDF to searchable PDF or other formats, it has options offered to customize your output files, including file size, page size, image quality, file extensions, security and so on.


To make PDF searchable free, there are online searchable PDF converters available, you just need to search online PDF converter with OCR feature in Google. Here, according to the test results, we pick 2 online searchable PDF converters for you.


It is always one of my favorite online tools to manage PDF files. You can use its online free service to edit, compress, unlock, protect, merge and convert both native and image-based PDFs. It supports batch conversion and allows users to export PDFs as 10+ formats, including searchable PDF, Word, Text ,etc. However, it supports recognizing only 6 languages (German, English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese).


Online-Convert offers different converters to perform conversion as archive, audio, device, documents, eBook and image. Though there is cluttered information or ads on the webpage, it does helps to make PDFs searchable. User can upload PDF from Mac, Dropbox, Google Drive or directly input an URL.


Sometimes, we just need to turn some papers into searchable PDF for filing or editing. In this case, we will need a powerful tool supports to convert scans directly to searchable PDF. Generally, such a tool won't be low in price, but powerful enough to get you an excellent experience on PDF conversions.


Readiris 17 is a professional OCR tool to convert PDFs and scans into searchable PDF or other Microsoft formats. In addition, it supports to merge, split, edit, annotate, protect and sign PDFs. Comparing to other PDF tools, it gives out a higher-quality OCR performance. Especially for users who need to scan very often, its feature of turning scans to searchable PDF brings users great convenience to create searchable digital copies. It is available both for Windows PC and Mac.


ABBYY FineReader is another OCR program but with more extended features to manage PDFs. In other words, ABBYY FineReader not only allows you to convert PDF and scans to searchable PDF, but also allows you to edit the PDF text, annotate, compare, protect and share.


I have access to a scanner at my library which can create "searchable PDFs." These are PDFs that show the exact image of a scanned document, but there is a kind of hidden text in the PDF that can be selected when you try to select a portion of the image that contains text. In this way you can copy and paste text or search for text in the scanned document. This is VERY useful. It's an awesome improvement over raw scanned images. I also have several apps on my mac that can create this kind of searchable PDF from a scanned document or a raw image.


It's worth saying here that I tried the latest version of Adobe Acrobat DC for Mac, and it doesn't seem to even allow me to view the hidden searchable text, much less edit it. It does allow me to replace scanned image with the results of it's own OCR process so that I could edit and save the document. But this would produce horrible results for any of the scanned documents that I am using. It seems designed for editing a "native PDF" not editing a scanned document. 2ff7e9595c


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