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

[Clint__]

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. 

[Bernd Alheit · Accepted solution]

You can disable this at Edit PDF:

[QINGCHARLES]

It has been two years and they still haven't fixed it, so I guess they're happy with it.

[lindav11859390]

Sorry to reanimate a 3 year old post, but this is the only one I've found which really lays into this issue as it should.

As someone who mostly uses Acrobat to compile things like artist residency applications, this is actually so infuriating. The documents I try to compile in Acrobat consist of a mix of a few other pdfs, namely:

1. Image compilations I've made in Bridge (so combining my artwork psds into a pdf)

2. My CV

3. Motivation letters, answers to questions from the open call, etc.

The OCR somehow thinks that literally little bits of linework and texture in my illustrations, which bear no resemblance to letters, are letters and it tries to convert them. I've tried every solution presented in this discussion and still nothing works. And I cannot uncheck "recognise text" under scanned documents because my documents are not scanned! They're all created digitally.

Genuinely Adobe, please make this less painful for us. We already pay you way too much.

[AngryAdm]

Yeah, it is the PAIN in all my body parts, when Acrobat tries to recognize 200+ pages of the document because I accidentally clicked the edit button. 
Adobe, please disable this useless auto "feature", your users are smart enough to click the "recognize" button in case we need it.

[Eric5FDD]

NOTE TO ADOBE: Not allowing users to turn OFF default automatic OCR when trying to edit a document is not enhancement of users' productivity - which is what your users pay you for - but theft of productivity. I must constantly click the "undo" error or "esc" key each time I wish to edit a scanned pdf, when sometimes I wish only to add a single line of text on top of an image.

You are aware of this conceptual and programming defect, but have not corrected it to enable users to disable auto OCR. Perhaps you believe auto OCR gets it right all the time, but it does not. Numerous errors result when it attempts to decipher moderate to low quality scanned documents, especially when there are images or signatures. This is understandable, but then please allow users to disable the auto OCR feature at their discretion. Thank you.

[Dustin34194422zzp1]

go to preferences, select "reading", at the top of that page select "Do not read documents"    Hope that helps.  SUPER ANNOYING, I know...

[Holden37583525ddvf]

WORKS LIKE A CHARM!

[rogerinlondon]

Finally a solution that seems to work. Thanks!

[Sahajah]

Just another unwanted and useless function forced on us by Adobe.  Stop pretending you are clever and leave my documents and my program the way I have it configured.  Your arrogance and intrusion into my decisions is intolerable and purely fascist.

[Dan5E2E]

Compounding the issue is the newest version of Acrobat DC and the rearranged "even smarter" interface decisions and new locations to learn. Here's how I managed to unselect and remove text recognition, starting with the new location of the OCR default checkbox in verion 2024.001.20643.

 I loaded a PDF of a line drawing with three hand-written words on it. 

Clicked Edit. The screen went black.

Clicked the gear/settings button, unchecked the Recognize scanned text.

An alert box opened saying that I'd lose any unsaved changes. EXACTLY. Now they get it!

The image reappeared as originally loaded. No OCR.

NOTE: My edit was simply to crop the image. No desire to add text.

Before doing this, I also tried the Reading preference settings suggested above. That may have prevented automatic scanning when I opened it.

[Brooke37473837m6c2]

Sadly that box is greyed out in my current version of Adobe Acrobat. I found a combination of TWO people's answers addressed the issue for me. (Windows 10 on Surface Pro 4 running Acrobat Pro (I think. This is the first SW product I've ever come across where I can't find the SW version I'm running!).

First: Use the "All tools" menu and select "View More." 

Select "Optimized Scanned Pages"

UNcheck "Recognize Text" at the bottom of the window, in the "Text Recognition Options" section.

THEN:

Open the Edit menu and click on the Settings feature (the gear symbol to the right of "Edit")

UNcheck "Recognize scanned text"

This stopped the random OCR and 3 degree CW tilt my documents experience. But CHECK YOUR WORK everyone! One page in one document I've been working on since I changed settings is still being tilted to the right so I have a weird wedge of white showing in each corner. I'm going to have to figure out how to correct those but for now I have to move on to other work. I've wasted enough time on this.

I'm saving these instructions because I don't trust the app not to randomly reset the settings on its own.

[Zealous37893443sesg]

Its 2024 and this feature is still here. Its trash!! And I absolutely DESPISE IT!!!! I have to open up scripts, good luck even rotating a f-ing page because all the text has to be scanned. Unchecking my boxes made it even worse. Adobe, you suck. Everyone else, what alternative PDF editing program do you use? 

[QINGCHARLES]

4 years this bug has been here! Does no-one at Adobe use Acrobat themselves?

[Abambo]

My acrobat version does recognize text only when I ask it to do that, which happens quite often on scanned assets.

[AngryAdm]

Hell yeah!

I don't know how this magic works, but this "Recognize scanned text" checkbox is disabled most of the time, and I still had issues with auto recognition.

But I've opened a document scanned with Adobe Scan. And this check box was active.

Then I unchecked it and, Yahoo! No more auto OCR.

[jenniferc62910083]

I cant get it turned off, but when i just want to flip some pages around, go to organize pages, all of the pages of the document will populate and you can click on each page and flip it, without the page recognition.  

[rogerinlondon]

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" "

[j._1475]

No sooner I buy and subscribe and using acrobat.adobe.com online and next thing I know - spending an hour trying to find settings or preferences and reading help pages ... I am going to stop here... as I see has been going on for years now apparently.  

I am looking to turn off "auto" converting scanned pages and images to text. Why is it auto and not a choice when it is needed? Right now I do not want to wait for it to scan over and over every page I am trying to read as my current task is only wanting to organize and number the pages of a scanned document. Oh well, I decided if I am going to waste some time, I might as well leave this comment while I'm at it.

[j._1475]

Yeah ok, maybe because the natural thing to do as a new user is click a file and it goes into edit mode, whereas for this task I need to skip trying to read a file and find the "organize pages" mode in tools. 

[rogerinlondon]

I had a look at acrobat.adobe.com since I have not used it before, and it seems to me that you maybe should drop the files in the box "Organise Pages" below under Tools. Have you tried that?

EDIT: Forget that, you can not go over in Edit mode after that. Weird.