Participant

Question

Correct Recognized Text Not Allowing Edits on Mac

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
April 21, 2025
4 replies
1061 views

Hello all,

I am using Acrobat Pro on a iMac device. I used the Scan & OCR option to recognize text in the file, which it successfully completed. When I select the "Correct recognized text" tool, the pink boxes of questionable OCR also populates as expected. However, when I select the tool to edit the OCR text with "Recognized as," the option to edit the text and to accept those changes are both greyed out. I checked for updates and signed out and back into the Adobe account to see if those would fix the issue to no avail. However, my Windows installation works without a problem. Hopefully, someone will have a better idea as to what is occuring here and how to fix it.

Thanks!

A

Alisa5C1E

Participant

I just tried from the fresh (pre-OCR) PDF to recognize text, selecting “Searchable text” option and once the conversion was complete, I got this error message: “

Acrobat could not perform recognition because: Unable to process the page because the Paper Capture recognition service experienced an error. (6)”

Meenakshi0101

Community Manager

Hi Alisa5C1E,

Thank you for reaching out, and sorry to hear that you are experiencing the issue with the OCR feature.

As you receive the error, please try the suggestion marked as correct in the following community post with a similar issue:

Additionally, when using the Scan and OCR tool, please try the following suggestion:

Even though OCR completes successfully, the text layer may not be structured in a way that allows corrections. Try the steps below:

Go to Scan & OCR > Recognize Text > In This File
Click Settings (gear icon) and ensure that the dropdown for Output, Searchable Image (Exact) is selected.
Re-run OCR

“Recognized as” Disabled Due to Selection Context. Please try the following:

Try clicking directly inside a single pink-highlighted word box
Avoid selecting multiple words or the entire line
Double-click to isolate a single word

If the issue persists, please share the PDF with us so we can investigate further. Also, let us know your Acrobat version number.

Let us know if you need any help.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

A

Alisa5C1E

Participant

I am experiencing the same issue. I want to correct the OCR so that this scan can become useable data. I have tried restarting; saving, closing, and reopening; and redoing the OCR. My version of Acrobat is Pro and also up to date. I am on a NEW Mac running OS 26.5.

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

What are your OCR conversion settings?

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

C

cassandra_0078Author

Participant

Hello Dave,

Searchable Image, Downsample to 600 dpi, English (US), All Pages

I attempted using editable text and image, but that only allowed for annotations, not making the content searchable.

The initial OCR run with searchable image does work, but I want to be able to manually correct the mis-recognized text. This feature worked fine for months and only recently stopped allowing for the corrections to be made. This failure is only on the Mac computers I am working with, the Windows version is operating as intended.

Cassandra

Dave Creamer of IDEAS

Community Expert

What [exact] version of Acrobat Pro are you using? Do you have the option to review recognized text?

David Creamer: Community Expert (ACI and ACE 1995-2023)

Amal.

Legend

Hi there

Hope you are doing well and thanks for reaching out.

As described, the Correct Recognized Text tool in Acrobat Pro on your iMac isn’t letting you edit the OCR text, specifically, the Recognized as option and the accept checkmark are greyed out. As you've already tried the initial steps by checking for updates and re-signing into your account.

Please check the document restriction summary and make sure the document is not restricted from editing. Open the PDF > Go to Document Properties (Cmd+D) > Under the security tab > Check 'Document restriction summary'

Also, ensure the OCR Layer is Fully Editable: After running OCR, try saving the file, then closing and reopening it before using Correct Recognized Text. This can help ensure the OCR layer is fully committed and editable.

Check the language and font Compatibility: Go to Scan & OCR > Recognize Text > In This File, then check the Settings.

Ensure the correct document language is selected. Mismatched languages can cause Acrobat to grey out editing tools if it can't properly interpret the text.

Let us know how it goes.

C

cassandra_0078Author

Participant

Hello Amal,

I checked the document properties and saw nothing that should br restricting my ability to edit the recognized text. I have included a screenshot for your reference.

I attempted running the OCR, save, close, and reopen option without success. The settings for the Recognize Text were:

Document language: English (US)
Output: Searchable image
Downsample to: 600 dpi

I also attempted this using the output "Editable text and image" without success as well.

The computers with this issue (as there are two) are both 2021 iMacs (24 inch) with M1 chips, 16 GB RAM. One is running Ventura 13.5.2, the other Sequoia 15.3.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Cassandra

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