Disabling OCR in Acrobat 2025

[Awesome_Whisper8032]

Hi,

I was wondering if someone could show me how to disable OCR in Acrobat 2025. I've tried doing what people said to do in other posts, but the versions they were using were older.

Thank you in advance!

[Awesome_Whisper8032]

There's no way to delete this post, but I was able to figure it out.

[gary_sc · Accepted solution]

Sorry, @Awesome_Whisper8032, you can't say you got the correct answer if you do not supply it in case someone else wants to know. 

So, for the benefit of anyone else, here's what to do:

First, go into All Tools and at the bottom you'll see "Scan & OCR"

 Next, click on the "Enhance Scanned File,: and where it says "Recognize text," uncheck that. 

 

Now, Awesom, I am curious as to why you do not want the OCR process to take place, and what format do you want your scans to end up as? 

Do you realize that the final document will be significantly smaller if it is OCRed?

BTW, the BEST way to avoid having your documents not OCRed is to use the scanning software that your scanner came with (although you may want to check if you need any updates). After all, it's the same scanning software that Acrobat uses, via TWAIN.

 

[Awesome_Whisper8032]

Hi Gary,

My apologies. The reason I was wanting to turn off OCR was because it kept making the text blury and was messing up other markings on the page. With it turned off, I was able to get a clearer view of the pages.

Thank you for your help!

[gary_sc]

Hi, @Awesome_Whisper8032, OK, very reasonable. I do have one favor to ask: Can you please go into the Scan & OCR Tool, then down to the Recognize Text section, and select the "In this file," and click on the gear?

 This will bring up the following three options:

Can you please let me know which of the three it is set at? Additionally, could you please set it to either of the other two options, perform a new scan (with OCR), and let me know about the readability quality at that point? If you have time to do the third one, I'd be grateful for that as well. 

Also, for the record, when you scan, can you see the resolution at which you are scanning? Is it 200 ppi? 300 ppi?

This would be very helpful to me.

Thank you,

[mate29093130bmog]

Dear Gary_sc, FYI i am fully aware that OCRed files are much smaller, but I don't use pdf files for archiving, i create graphic design and use pdf files for digital printing. Sometimes i don't want to edit them in their own app (eg. illustrator/indesign or ps) before i start the printing process as the client wants me to make some last minute mods: take off an object, a line, a dot etc. Normally  it should be quicker to just delete a graphic element in acrobat 2025pro, in a blink of the eye, but acrobat trying to OCR these large files is a pain in the back. At least it should be able to turned off permanently. For example i have text on a large photo, acrobat freezes, a process bar goes up and voila, the photo is rotated by 2 degrees... Noone asked that. It is really annoying. 
I've tried your suggestion, but the checkbox is already unchecked, the OCR still takes long seconds and minutes every time...

[ocr_is_a_waste]

I've tried a bunch of ppl's solutions and none of them worked for me - (using the current version as of this day - it's all online as a service now anyway) The only thing that seems to work is hitting cntl+Z to undo the skewing and ocr but it still wastes time and energy - has anyone thought about the collective waste of electricity (millions of needless OCR commands now running)? I can hear my processor fan turn on everytime and unsolicited OCR command runs - what a monumental waste of energy - I thought everyone was trying to conserve energy? The time I am now forced to waste, waiting, thumb-up-a**, for un unwanted OCR commands to run is pi**ing me off! The adding pages from other PDFs also doesn't work like it used to - it's now clunky as hell too.  

[Nick348886412fi0]

I agree. I've already spend hours on this, and none of these solutions work. I'm working with 15mb architectural file, and I DON"T NEED THE OCR. But it crashes every time because again it's an architectural drawing, so the OCR attempt is huge and fails. I can open this on my phone and it works fine in seconds, but on my laptop I can't use the file at all. Why is there not a super simple way to turn this OFF!!!!!