FAQ: Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

[Allta Media]

After creating a PDF file via scanner, you can use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to make your document searchable.  Here are some great resources for getting started with OCR or troubleshooting problems related to OCR.

Recognize text in scanned documents (text)
Recognizing text in scanned PDF documents (video tutorial)
Correct OCR text in PDFs
OCR and Scanning
Troubleshooting Scanning and OCR

This document was generated from the following discussion: FAQ: Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

[aefilter]

These FAQ AND Help files are out of date. In this FAQ, the "text" says nothing but refers to the video, which is useless for CC. One of these pages recommended described General preferences that do not exist in the current version:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/X/pro/using/WS58a04a822e3e50102bd615109794195ff-7f6d.w.html

This FAQ is also useless:

http://forums.adobe.com/docs/DOC-1482

The "Help" file is also useless and refers to a previous version with features that no longer exist in the default UI of Acrobat.

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/X/pro/using/WS58a04a822e3e50102bd615109794195ff-7f6f.w.html

What is going on in the documentation and/or Help group? There must be tens of thousands of Americans that could be hired to make the documentation useful. The group might need a re-org rather than more outsourcing or offshoring or new Robohelp or AIR apps, since it's been several years now of devolution in the quality of the Help docs. It certainly would save on support costs and customer frustration.

In addition, why would the Acrobat team hide the "Recognize Text" tool for OCR? It seems like the 3rd change in 3 versions.

[Allta Media]

I'm not sure how you arrived in the Acrobat X Pro. Help document but here is the link from the Acrobat Help & Support page for Acrobat XI:

http://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/scan-documents-pdf.html#recognize_text_in_scanned_documents

[aefilter]

I went to Acrobat Support for CC, then Acrobat to:

http://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/topics.html

Then I searched and ended picking the wrong link. It would be better if product version Help results were sorted by version.

I wanted started from CC support and had to pick blindly among hundreds of results that were for old products. If it was Acrobat 10 vs. 11 I probably would have noticed.

Thanks for the help.

Another confsuing thing for me was that somehow I was parked on Common Tools and had a hard time getting finding other tools.

[Guest]

Hi everybody,

I'm very pleased with the new version Acrobat Reader 2015, and I'm particularly interested in OCR. What I want to do is to make Adobe OCR recognise a handwritten piece of text, yes I know it is not an easy task, but the script is so clear that I think it is possible. The question is then, if I can "train" Adobe with a font similar to the handwriting. In fact, adobe is now able to set the frames for different parts of the pdf audit allows me to edit it, but some letters are wrongly recognised. So, any suggestion??

thanks!

SS

Sorry I forgot to mention that I'm working on a mac version.