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codyreading
Participant
October 19, 2016
Question

Not allowing to edit text after OCR

  • October 19, 2016
  • 2 replies
  • 5145 views

Hello,

I have scanned an old document, and am trying to edit the text inside. However, when I go to edit PDF, it does not allow me to edit the text itself. I OCR'd the document and it recognizes the text, but I am unable to edit it. I am currently using a trial version of Adobe Acrobat Pro DC.

The file can be downloaded here Dropbox - Sample Page.pdf .

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

Lovekesh Garg
Adobe Employee
Lovekesh Garg
Adobe Employee
October 20, 2016

David is right here, OCR was run with Searchable Image or Searchable Image (Exact) method in this file.

To enable editing please follow these steps:

- Open the file you want to make changes in

- Go to Tools> Enhance scans> Recognize Text> In this file

- Select settings button and change output style to "Editable Text & Images" and OK

- Click Recognize Text

Now it will make your PDF editable. If you goto edit PDF tool, you can make changes to the text.

Hope it will resolve your issue.

Thanks.

    W
    wad11656
    Participant
    October 1, 2024

    I don't have "Recognize Text> In this file".

     

    All I have is this greyed-out "Recognize scanned text" checkbox.

     

    The weird thing is, I can highlight text. But I can't edit it.

     

     

    CtDave
    CtDave
    Participating Frequently
    October 20, 2016

    It sounds like you used the OCR method for Searchable Image or Searchable Image (Exact). These provide an OCR output that uses "hidden" text (the glyphs (symbols seen) for recognized characters get no "fill" or "stroke"). The bit-map image of each character remains. These are what is "seen" and, of course, as an image / picture of a character they cannot be edited by Acrobat or text edit routines. Edits of the image/picture would have to be done using an image/photo editor on the image exported from the PDF.

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