What languages are supported?

OCR supports many languages depending on the language packs installed on the server; most common languages are covered.

Will this work on handwritten text?

OCR is most reliable on printed or typed text; handwriting recognition is far less accurate and results will vary.

Does OCR change how the document looks?

No — the visual appearance stays the same; OCR adds an invisible, searchable text layer underneath the existing scanned image.

OCR PDF: How to Make a Scanned Document Searchable

A scanned document is, technically, just a picture of a page — there's no actual text underneath for a computer to search, select, or copy, no matter how clearly you can read it with your own eyes. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) fixes that gap.

What OCR actually does

When you scan a paper document, the result is an image — pixels that happen to form the shapes of letters, but with no underlying text data. OCR analyzes those shapes, recognizes the actual characters and words, and adds an invisible text layer directly beneath the image. The page still looks exactly the same, but now a computer — and you — can search, select, and copy text from it.

Why this matters

Searchability — find a specific term across dozens of scanned pages instead of reading through each one manually.
Copy and paste — pull a quote or paragraph directly out of a scanned document instead of retyping it.
Accessibility — screen readers can only read actual text, not the pixels of a scanned image.
Compatibility with other tools — PDF to Word and PDF to Excel both work far better once there's real text to extract.

Step-by-step: running OCR on a PDF

Open OCR PDF and upload your scanned document.
The tool recognizes text across every page.
Download your searchable PDF — visually identical to the original, but now with selectable, searchable text underneath.

What affects OCR accuracy

Scan quality — clean, high-contrast scans produce far more accurate results than blurry or skewed ones.
Font and print type — standard printed text is recognized reliably; unusual fonts or handwriting are much harder.
Language — OCR needs to know (or correctly detect) the document's language to recognize characters accurately.

After running OCR

Once your document has a real text layer, it becomes a much better candidate for:

PDF to Word, to get fully editable content instead of a static image.
PDF to Excel, if the scanned document contains tables or data.
AI Summarizer, which needs actual extractable text to work with.

A stack of old scanned paperwork becomes genuinely useful — searchable, copyable, and ready for further conversion — the moment OCR gives it a real text layer underneath.