A scanned PDF is just pictures of pages: you cannot search it, copy a paragraph or convert it to Word properly. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the letters in those pictures and turns them into real text. Docshar's OCR tool creates a searchable PDF, with invisible text placed over each word, and a plain text file.
Recognition runs on your device using the open-source tesseract.js engine. The first time, your browser downloads the engine and a language model (about 5–7 MB) from Docshar's own site and keeps them for next time; your PDF itself is not uploaded. Files can be up to 10 MB each.
Step by step
- Open the OCR tool. Go to Docshar OCR.
- Add the scanned PDF. Click Choose file or drop it on the page. Have a photo instead? Convert it with JPG to PDF first.
- Choose the document language. Under Document language, pick English, Hindi, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Dutch.
- Choose the output. Pick Searchable PDF + text file or Text file only.
- Recognise and download. Click Recognize text. It can take a few seconds per page. Then download the searchable PDF and the .txt file.
Hindi and other scripts
OCR can read Hindi (Devanagari) text. The searchable PDF supports Latin-script languages such as English, so for Hindi documents use the text file, which contains the recognised Hindi text that you can copy into any app.
Tips
- Better scans give better results. Straighten tilted pages with Deskew before running OCR.
- Scan at 300 DPI if you can, with good contrast. Very small, blurry or handwritten text is hard to recognise.
- Check important numbers, such as amounts, dates and ID numbers, against the original. OCR can misread similar characters like 0 and O.
- After OCR, you can convert the searchable PDF with PDF to Word to edit it.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know if my PDF needs OCR?
Open it and try to select a word or search for it. If you cannot, the page is an image and needs OCR.
Does OCR work offline?
Yes, after the first run. The first run needs the internet to download the engine and language model; your browser then keeps them, so later runs in the same language can go ahead offline. The recognition itself runs on your device.
Does OCR change how my PDF looks?
No. The searchable PDF looks exactly the same; the recognised text is added invisibly behind the image.
Can it read handwriting?
Only neat, printed-style handwriting, and not reliably. OCR works best on typed or printed text.
Try it now
Make your scanned PDF searchable.