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C
Clint__
Participant
September 16, 2020
Answered

How to ACTUALLY turn off Auto OCR - or I truly despise 'performing page recognition' / Automatic OCR

  • September 16, 2020
  • 12 replies
  • 65026 views

For myself (and it appears many others) this is the worst feature Adobe Acrobat (maybe Adobe period) currently has. Trying to edit a PDF is a nightmare with this idiotic scan. It repeatedly scans, over and over (once isn't enough?) it takes forever, and oddly it tilts random images off center.

What is the purpose of this? To frustrate users into using another PDF editor? I could understand if it was a work in progress, but you can't even turn the damn thing off. I've tried all the "steps" recommended and nothing. Yes, I have the latest version. 

Threads like this appear through-out Adobe support. It's currently a garbage feature - allow me to turn it off until it's useful. Until then, I'm using another editor. 

    Correct answer rogerinlondon

    To see this sidebar, I need to click on somethink like "Disable New Acrobat", but even when I see this sidebar, the "recognize text" box is greyed out and I can't doing anything with it. Is there any solution that works for either New Acrobat or Old Acrobat? Both versions I only get a greyed out option. I'm losing hours at work trying to fix this from ruining documents.


    This worked for me, originally posted on Feb 17, 2024.

    "go to preferences, select "reading", at the top of that page select "Do not read documents" 

    12 replies

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    defaultaa9yxftizujs
    Participating Frequently
    April 9, 2021

    MAN I am in an absolute rage right now over this feature and was about to post something like this myself.

     

    i cannot actually believe how annoying this is. I have made my documents in indesign. My graphics and layout and colours are DONE. I dont need acrobate to touch that. All im trying to do is edit some text fields as i am making an interacive PDF.

     

    Everytime i click slightly out of the text fields or something when im adjusting, it decides to scan my whole page and 'recognise' everything and make it all editable and movable. WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT THIS TO HAPPEN AUTOMATICALLY?

     

    its ruining my design, my files are ruined and i have to start all opver again to try and do this text fields without clicking in the wrong place or it will happen again!! im on like my tenth time now. I have had enough!!!!! turn off this stupid feature

      D
      defaultaa9yxftizujs
      Participating Frequently
      April 9, 2021

      P.s. AND BY THE WAY this is not 'Recognise text' that is turned off. this is called 'page recognition' and i dont know if im just too much in a rage to see how to turn this off but i cannot see anything anywhere to disable it

        BarbLovesInDesign
        BarbLovesInDesign
        Inspiring
        April 14, 2021

        I have had the same problem, but just with the latest update, though - as of today. I had to go to the Acrobat preferences, and under "Convert from pdf", view EVERY format in the list, and check the edit options for ALL of them, to uncheck the "Run OCR if needed" wherever it appeared (changes it to 'false'). and so far it is working. Previously, it would want to OCR scanned images sometimes, but then I could turn off the check box as indicated above (which also removed any OCR results), and all would be fine until the next time I checked the box on because I did want to OCR something....

          Bernd Alheit
          Community Expert
          Bernd AlheitCommunity Expert
          Community Expert
          September 16, 2020

          When you Edit PDF what want you edit?

          C
          Clint__Author
          Participant
          September 16, 2020

          In this case, I simply want to be able to add/remove text, and switch a few images. Rather uncomplicated - you would think.

          However, every time I scroll past (without even touching) an image, it starts the entire 'performing page recognition' again - for the entire 80 page document. In every awful encouter I've had with this 'Auto OCR' (even docs with only a few pages) the process itself takes far too long and wastes time rather than saves it.

          As of now, it's an annoyance and I'd prefer to turn it off completely, but even that doesn't seem possible.

            Bernd Alheit
            Community Expert
            Bernd AlheitCommunity Expert
            Community Expert
            September 16, 2020

            You can disable this at Edit PDF:

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