How to scan pdf for text

Hello @toshkuka

I hope you are doing well.

If you want to automate searching PDFs (e.g., programmatically scan for “invoice”), Adobe provides the Adobe PDF Services API (REST API / SDKs). See this article for more details: https://adobe.ly/45KEciO

Search for Text in a PDF (using Acrobat Pro). If your PDF already contains searchable text: Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro. Go to the Edit menu → choose Find (or press Ctrl + F / Cmd + F). Type invoice (or any keyword). Acrobat will jump to the first match. For advanced search (search across multiple PDFs or see all results): Press Shift + Ctrl + F (Windows) / Shift + Cmd + F (Mac). Enter “invoice”. Choose whether to search in the current document, all open documents, or an entire folder. See this article for more information: https://adobe.ly/4mQbsvU

If the PDF is a Scan (Image Only). You need to run OCR (Optical Character Recognition) first, so Acrobat can “see” text: Open the scanned PDF in Acrobat Pro. Go to All Tools → Scan & OCR → Recognize Text → In This File. Choose All pages (or select specific ones). Click Recognize Text. Acrobat will process the scan and convert it into a searchable PDF. Now repeat the Find (Ctrl + F) or Advanced Search (Shift + Ctrl + F) step to locate “invoice”. Check this article for more info: https://adobe.ly/3UEJ8kf

I hope this helps.

Thanks,
Anand Sri | Acrobat Community Team
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