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BennnnnNZ
Participant
December 1, 2020
Question

When comparing pdf drawings, it just says the whole page has been replaced.

  • December 1, 2020
  • 1 reply
  • 411 views

I'm trying to compare pdf drawings in the latest version of DC Pro Desktop.

When I select the files using the compare tool I get a warning:

Selected document is a scanned PDF and contains no text. Acrobat will perform image to image comparison only.

I've tried opening the file and selecting edit pdf, so it recognises the text and re-saving it, then comparing the re-saved files, but the same response comes up.

If I compare the files, it just tells me each and every page has been deleted and replaced, rather than finding the changes.

I've resorted to exporting both documents to word, then comparing in word, which is a pretty average fix....

Can the pdf's be saved as something that recognises the text and actually compares it?

1 reply

F
Fearless_navigator1228
Participant
August 8, 2025

Has anyone found a fix for this?

AnandSri
AnandSri
Legend
August 12, 2025

Hello @Fearless_navigator1228

 

I hope you are doing well. Thanks for reaching out. We're sorry for the trouble you had with the app.

 

Could you please share more details about the issue, as you have posted on an old community thread? Are you on a Windows machine or a Mac, and what is the version? What is the version of the Acrobat app installed? The above warning message means Acrobat is treating the PDFs as images, not text-based documents. This typically occurs when:

  • The PDFs are scanned drawings without embedded text.
  • OCR (Optical Character Recognition) hasn’t been properly applied or saved.

Even if you use Edit PDF to trigger OCR, Acrobat may not retain the recognized text unless you explicitly save the file with OCR applied.

 

Please ensure you have the latest version of Acrobat installed on the machine: 25.001.20623 Planned update, Aug 11, 2025. Check for any pending updates from the Menu > help > check for updates, install the updates, restart the app and the machine, and try again. 

  1. Apply OCR Properly:

    • Open the scanned PDF.
    • Go to All Tools > Scan & OCR > Recognize Text > In This File.
    • Choose All Pages, set language appropriately, and click Recognize Text.
    • After OCR completes, save the file.

  2. Verify Text Layer:

    • Try selecting text in the PDF. If you can highlight it, OCR was successful.
    • If not, repeat the OCR process.

  3. Compare Again:

    • Use All Tools > Compare Files with the OCR-applied versions.
    • Acrobat should now detect textual and layout differences, not just full-page replacements.

See these articles for more details: https://adobe.ly/4fCNEJE

https://adobe.ly/45JDHqm

 

Note: For highly graphical content like CAD drawings, even with OCR, Acrobat may still default to visual (image) comparison. If text-based comparison is critical, using OCR + export to Word (or specialized CAD/PDF comparison tools) is sometimes the only way to get granular change detection.

 

Let us know how it goes.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

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