How to Make a PDF Searchable

Adobe Acrobat

When a document is converted to or created as a PDF document, the content is not automatically searchable. However, with a few modifications, the PDF content may be indexed and made searchable. Even if a PDF has been scanned and saved as an image, the text may be made searchable by applying the optical character recognition (OCR) text recognizing function and re-saving the document.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• PDF document to be converted to OCR text
• Adobe Acrobat

1. Open the Adobe Acrobat application. Click "File > Open." Navigate to the scanned or saved (non-searchable) PDF to be indexed and searched. Open the PDF document so that the first page displays in the Adobe Acrobat work area.

2. Select "Document" from the top navigation menu bar. Next, select the option "Recognize Text Using OCR."

3. A "Recognize Text" dialog box will appear, allowing the user to select the pages to be converted and the output file type (scanned image text versus formatted text). Select the pages to be converted.

4. To select output file type, click the "Edit" button on the "Recognize Text" dialog box. Another dialog box will appear enabling the selection. Select the text output type--scanned versus rendered. Click "OK" to confirm these setting options and begin the conversion. The conversion will progress automatically.

5. Click "Save" and save the document once the conversion process has completed. Save the PDF with a new name to preserve the original document.

Tips & Warnings

• Once the text rendering has begun with the OCR tool, if you see a message that indicates that OCR could not be performed because the page contains renderable text, this simply means the text was already searchable prior to the attempt to convert. Adobe Acrobat Professional, version 7.0 and higher is required for OCR text conversion.

References

• Planet PDF
• Adobe Acrobat Professional