Automatic OCR on a complete folder?

[Yorkmod0815123]

How can I define a folder which includes subfolders and files of different types and then run the OCR over all accessible PDF-Files and save the text-information in the PDF? Of course the plan is that this works 100% automatically.

I appreciate your support! Thx.

[Lovekesh Garg · Accepted solution]

If you have multiple documents in multiple folders/subfolders where you need to run text recognition(OCR), you can do it in 1 go.

You need to create an action to perform these steps:

- Launch Acrobat and Go to Tools> Action Wizard> Create New Action

- From list select " Recognixe text" > "Recognize Text using OCR"

- In "Default options", select "Add folder"

- Uncheck "Prompt user" and specify settings for OCR and save

- In "Recognize Text - General settings" window, select language and "Output" as "Searchable Image" or "Searchable Image Exact" or "Editable Text and Images" and Ok

- In "output option" dialog select folder where you want to save and name of output files and click OK

- create action

Now you can run this action with these settings whenever you want.

It will run OCR on all the files and save them at the location you selected.Hope it saves your time and helps you better.

Thanks.

[Guest]

Thank you for your help.  This would require Adobe DC, correct?  I have Adobe Arcobat XI and I do not see the action menu in the tools panel or when I go to Edit Tool Panel.

[Lovekesh Garg]

Yes, I was talking about Acrobat DC. But this option is available in A11 also.

But as the steps, you are doing also performing the same action, you can continue with that.

Thanks.

[Guest]

Lets say I want the action to search a folder that has a number of subfolders.  Will it be able to pick up on those subfolders and the contents within?  Can it output the newly OCRd files into a "Finished" folder while maintaining the same folder tree?

[Guest]

Below is what my Tool panel looks like.  There is NO action tool.  How can I add that?  I am using Adobe XI 11.0.19.  The Javascript tool does not work like what was explained above.

Lovekesh Garg​

[vinilk52826823]

Does this work on Scanned Images and Documents without converting it?

[Lovekesh Garg]

Not exactly, but you can do it using Advance search functionality.

Instead of selecting "Editable Text & Images", select "Searchable Image(Exact)". It will not make PDFs editable but add a text layer on images or scanned documents. Also, you can save these documents as a copy of original instead of making changes in original.

I hope it will resolve your issue.

Thanks.

[Yorkmod0815123]

Thanks much, that helps. Meanwhile I found out that you can also can use the toll to improve scans, choose OCR for multiple files, choose the settings and go.

[Lovekesh Garg]

Yes, this action is also doing the same steps. You said 100 % automation, so I shared these steps.

Steps behind both the workflows will be same.

Thanks.

[coryh25651314]

This works great to automate the ocr process, but my problem is that it also takes every other file in the folder it's set to watch and also OCR them as well.  Is there a way to make this only look for PDF files and nothing else?