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Jeff233670067jfv
Participating Frequently
June 2, 2025
Answered

Can't Edit PDF, it is always an image

  • June 2, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1795 views

I am trying to edit a PDF in Adobe Acrobat Standard. The PDF comes in as an image. I do the scan & OCR, it finds all the text on the PDF, but when I click on Edit a PDF I keep getthing this message. "Acrobat has detected that this page doesn't have editable text. If it is a scanned paghe, conver it to another formate using the Export PDF tool." But the PDF is not a scanned image.

The other thing I noticed is in the Edit a PDF section in the gear icon, there is a check box for reconignze scanned text, but it is grayed out.

 

I also tried running the scan & ORC saving the PFD and re-opening it in Adobe but I still can't edit any of the text. The PDF still appears as one large image.

 

 

Correct answer Tariq Ahmad

My account has an Adobe Standard license. The version I am running is 2025.001.20474. I spoke to Adobe support and they said the PDF generated by our ERP is being treated as an image. But support could not dell me why I can edit the PDF via the web Adobe but not the desktop application.


Hi @Jeff233670067jfv, 

 

All I can think is that the Acrobat Standard subscription license doesn't have OCR functionality, which is required while editing Flattened, Scanner, or image documents. Check feature comparison here: https://adobe.ly/3HGlLmT

 

And Acrobat Web is running OCR in this case. I hope that answers the question. Let us know if you have further questions. 


~Tariq

2 replies

Bernd Alheit
Bernd Alheit
Community Expert
June 3, 2025

Which OCR option do you use?

J
Jeff233670067jfvAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 3, 2025

I am not sure by what you mean.

Bernd Alheit
Bernd Alheit
Community Expert
June 3, 2025

I mean this:

creative explorer
creative explorer
Community Expert
June 3, 2025

@Jeff233670067jfv You're on the right track with Scan & OCR, as that's Acrobat's way of converting those pixels into selectable and editable text. However, if it's still appearing as one large image even after running OCR and re-saving, it suggests the OCR process might not be completing successfully, or the file has some underlying protection preventing the edit mode from activating. 

A different work-around is, you can upload your PDF (even if it's an image-based PDF) to Google Drive. Then, right-click the PDF file in Google Drive and choose "Open with" > "Google Docs." Google Docs has its own built-in OCR capability that often does a decent job of extracting text from image-based PDFs, creating an editable Google Doc or re-save as a PDF again to bring back into Acrobat!

I know it's a work-around! 

 

m
J
Jeff233670067jfvAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 3, 2025

Thanks for the sugestion but I need to make this work in Adobe for our end users.

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