Participant

Answered

How to ACTUALLY turn off Auto OCR - or I truly despise 'performing page recognition' / Automatic OCR

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
September 16, 2020
15 replies
67141 views

For myself (and it appears many others) this is the worst feature Adobe Acrobat (maybe Adobe period) currently has. Trying to edit a PDF is a nightmare with this idiotic scan. It repeatedly scans, over and over (once isn't enough?) it takes forever, and oddly it tilts random images off center.

What is the purpose of this? To frustrate users into using another PDF editor? I could understand if it was a work in progress, but you can't even turn the damn thing off. I've tried all the "steps" recommended and nothing. Yes, I have the latest version.

Threads like this appear through-out Adobe support. It's currently a garbage feature - allow me to turn it off until it's useful. Until then, I'm using another editor.

Correct answer rogerinlondon

To see this sidebar, I need to click on somethink like "Disable New Acrobat", but even when I see this sidebar, the "recognize text" box is greyed out and I can't doing anything with it. Is there any solution that works for either New Acrobat or Old Acrobat? Both versions I only get a greyed out option. I'm losing hours at work trying to fix this from ruining documents.

This worked for me, originally posted on Feb 17, 2024.

"go to preferences, select "reading", at the top of that page select "Do not read documents"

S

sandrah80731053

Known Participant

I have disabled the "Recognize scanned text" under the gear icon in the Edit menu, I have set the Preferences > Reading dropdown to "Do not read the document", I have gone into the Windows Registry Editor PaperCapturePlugin and changed the Value data to zero, and I have tried "Disable New Acrobat" and doing all those steps again. I have tried every “solution” I’ve found, but my Acrobat Pro is still automatically OCR'ing every tiff file I convert. Is there literally no way to make it stop?

T

Tariq Ahmad Dar

Community Manager

Hi @sandrah80731053,

Thanks for reaching out, and sorry for the troubled experience. We definitely dont want our users to have this experience. Since you have exhaust almost everything that is proven to be successful in this situation, could you help us with the following:

Is your machine personal or work machine?
Acrobat version. Acrobat > Help > About Adobe Acrobat.
Export the registry key and upload it as txt file
Share a short video of an issue while showing removing OCR checkbox.

This will help us understand the issue better and will help us discuss this case internally with the product engineering.

~Tariq

S

sandrah80731053

Known Participant

I am on a work computer in my company’s office, running Windows 11. I do not have the ability to take a video for you, but attached are TXT files of the registry key and all the text on the About Adobe Acrobat screen. The problem only seems to be happening with TIFF files, not JPGs or PNGs, and it happens both whether I bring them in through the create/open at the top of the screen or whether I drag and drop them into the page thumbnails pane to add a new page to a longer PDF.

About Adobe Acrobat.txt

PaperCapturePlugin.txt

Adoodoobeedoo

Participant

Made an account just to add to this.

Dear Adobe,

This feature has destroyed my experience with your supposed top-tier PDF editing and management software. I would agree with the vision for this program if your comapany’s idea of a functioning PDF editing software is “Always scan the page whenever editing is enabled, no matter the size of the page nor the content within it, which may or may not have the side effect of causing the program to crash.” Oh, and what’s that? There’s no way to turn it off. This thread is nearly two years old now and this idiotic program still chooses to scan the page even when every setting that could possibly prompt the scan has been turned off.

What is the real reason here? Is this multi-milion dollar company incapable of fixing a 2 year old bug? Are you doing this on purpose to have data to feed to your AI? This is not an accusation, I’d rather much believe the entire team at Adobe cannot handle a bug such as turning off an automatic feature. That’s all I have to say, have a wonderful day.

T

Tariq Ahmad Dar

Community Manager

Hello!

Thank you for sharing your experience. I understand how frustrating it can be when the application behaves in a way that disrupts your workflow, especially when working with larger or complex documents.

In Acrobat, the Edit PDF tool may automatically attempt to recognize text (OCR) when the content is detected as scanned or image-based. This is intended to enable editing, but we understand that it may not always be desirable and can impact performance in certain cases.

There is an option you can try to help control this behavior:

Go to Tools > Edit PDF
In the right-hand panel, locate Recognize Text
Clear or disable this option to prevent automatic OCR from being triggered

Please note that, depending on the document structure, Acrobat may still analyze the page when entering edit mode, particularly if the content is interpreted as image-based.

If the issue continues, we would be glad to take a closer look if you can share a sample file.

You may also check this discussion where users are discussing a registry-level workaround:

Additionally, if you would like to request more control over this behavior or suggest improvements, you can submit feedback directly to our product team here:
👉 https://acrobat.uservoice.com/

Our product teams actively review submissions there, and it is the best way to ensure your feedback is considered for future updates.

~Tariq

K

Kevin32368353otk4

Participant

This auto scan “feature” has rendered acrobat unuseable. select edit and it starts and never finishes the OCR scan! I just want to rotate the page, add a page, and save it!!! WTF. They have ruined a progran everyone just expects to work.

J

j._1475

Participant

No sooner I buy and subscribe and using acrobat.adobe.com online and next thing I know - spending an hour trying to find settings or preferences and reading help pages ... I am going to stop here... as I see has been going on for years now apparently.

I am looking to turn off "auto" converting scanned pages and images to text. Why is it auto and not a choice when it is needed? Right now I do not want to wait for it to scan over and over every page I am trying to read as my current task is only wanting to organize and number the pages of a scanned document. Oh well, I decided if I am going to waste some time, I might as well leave this comment while I'm at it.

J

j._1475

Participant

Yeah ok, maybe because the natural thing to do as a new user is click a file and it goes into edit mode, whereas for this task I need to skip trying to read a file and find the "organize pages" mode in tools.

J

jenniferc62910083

Participant

I cant get it turned off, but when i just want to flip some pages around, go to organize pages, all of the pages of the document will populate and you can click on each page and flip it, without the page recognition.

rogerinlondon

Inspiring

This worked for me, originally posted on Feb 17, 2024.

"go to preferences, select "reading", at the top of that page select "Do not read documents" "

Z

Zealous37893443sesg

Participant

Its 2024 and this feature is still here. Its trash!! And I absolutely DESPISE IT!!!! I have to open up scripts, good luck even rotating a f-ing page because all the text has to be scanned. Unchecking my boxes made it even worse. Adobe, you suck. Everyone else, what alternative PDF editing program do you use?

Q

QINGCHARLES

Inspiring

4 years this bug has been here! Does no-one at Adobe use Acrobat themselves?

Abambo

Community Expert

My acrobat version does recognize text only when I ask it to do that, which happens quite often on scanned assets.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

D

Dan5E2E

Participant

Compounding the issue is the newest version of Acrobat DC and the rearranged "even smarter" interface decisions and new locations to learn. Here's how I managed to unselect and remove text recognition, starting with the new location of the OCR default checkbox in verion 2024.001.20643.

I loaded a PDF of a line drawing with three hand-written words on it.

Clicked Edit. The screen went black.

Clicked the gear/settings button, unchecked the Recognize scanned text.

An alert box opened saying that I'd lose any unsaved changes. EXACTLY. Now they get it!

The image reappeared as originally loaded. No OCR.

NOTE: My edit was simply to crop the image. No desire to add text.

Before doing this, I also tried the Reading preference settings suggested above. That may have prevented automatic scanning when I opened it.

B

Brooke37473837m6c2

Participant

Sadly that box is greyed out in my current version of Adobe Acrobat. I found a combination of TWO people's answers addressed the issue for me. (Windows 10 on Surface Pro 4 running Acrobat Pro (I think. This is the first SW product I've ever come across where I can't find the SW version I'm running!).

First: Use the "All tools" menu and select "View More."

Select "Optimized Scanned Pages"

UNcheck "Recognize Text" at the bottom of the window, in the "Text Recognition Options" section.

THEN:

Open the Edit menu and click on the Settings feature (the gear symbol to the right of "Edit")

UNcheck "Recognize scanned text"

This stopped the random OCR and 3 degree CW tilt my documents experience. But CHECK YOUR WORK everyone! One page in one document I've been working on since I changed settings is still being tilted to the right so I have a weird wedge of white showing in each corner. I'm going to have to figure out how to correct those but for now I have to move on to other work. I've wasted enough time on this.

I'm saving these instructions because I don't trust the app not to randomly reset the settings on its own.

S

Sahajah

Participating Frequently

Just another unwanted and useless function forced on us by Adobe. Stop pretending you are clever and leave my documents and my program the way I have it configured. Your arrogance and intrusion into my decisions is intolerable and purely fascist.

D

Dustin34194422zzp1

Participant

go to preferences, select "reading", at the top of that page select "Do not read documents" Hope that helps. SUPER ANNOYING, I know...

H

Holden37583525ddvf

Participant

WORKS LIKE A CHARM!

L

lindav11859390

Participant

Sorry to reanimate a 3 year old post, but this is the only one I've found which really lays into this issue as it should.

As someone who mostly uses Acrobat to compile things like artist residency applications, this is actually so infuriating. The documents I try to compile in Acrobat consist of a mix of a few other pdfs, namely:

1. Image compilations I've made in Bridge (so combining my artwork psds into a pdf)

2. My CV

3. Motivation letters, answers to questions from the open call, etc.

The OCR somehow thinks that literally little bits of linework and texture in my illustrations, which bear no resemblance to letters, are letters and it tries to convert them. I've tried every solution presented in this discussion and still nothing works. And I cannot uncheck "recognise text" under scanned documents because my documents are not scanned! They're all created digitally.

Genuinely Adobe, please make this less painful for us. We already pay you way too much.

A

AngryAdm

Participant

Yeah, it is the PAIN in all my body parts, when Acrobat tries to recognize 200+ pages of the document because I accidentally clicked the edit button.
Adobe, please disable this useless auto "feature", your users are smart enough to click the "recognize" button in case we need it.

E

Eric5FDD

Participant

NOTE TO ADOBE: Not allowing users to turn OFF default automatic OCR when trying to edit a document is not enhancement of users' productivity - which is what your users pay you for - but theft of productivity. I must constantly click the "undo" error or "esc" key each time I wish to edit a scanned pdf, when sometimes I wish only to add a single line of text on top of an image.

You are aware of this conceptual and programming defect, but have not corrected it to enable users to disable auto OCR. Perhaps you believe auto OCR gets it right all the time, but it does not. Numerous errors result when it attempts to decipher moderate to low quality scanned documents, especially when there are images or signatures. This is understandable, but then please allow users to disable the auto OCR feature at their discretion. Thank you.

Show more replies

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.