How to turn off Auto OCR

[John28969006cnl0]

Hello! Forgive me if this has been posted on previously. I did what due diligence I could in the time I had, but found nothing like this issue.

I use Acrobat Pro DC and regularly use Cntrl F to find words and phrases. If the PDF is not readable, DC would always tell me and offer to make the PDF readable right on the spot. This prompt would always come with a box to check and, in my stupidity, I read it as offering to make PDFs readable automatically without prompting. I held off from checking it until I knew what I wanted, but when I finally did it, the option disappeared. I realize that I can use Scan & OCR --> Recognize Text, but I really liked having the option on the spot. 

Can someone please tell me how to turn this option back on? I've searched for answers and tried figuring it out in the preferences, but cannot find anything that will restore this. Can anyone help me to reset this option? 

[Amal. · Accepted solution]

Hi @John28969006cnl0 

Hope you are doing well, and sorry to hear that.

The OCR is turned on by default. Therefore, when you open a scanned document for editing, the current page is converted to editable text. Depending on whether you want to convert your scanned documents to editable text or not, you can turn off/on the automatic OCR option.

To turn off/on automatic OCR:

1. Choose Tools > Edit PDF.
2. To turn off automatic OCR, do the following:
   In the right pane, clear the Recognize text checkbox. From next time, Acrobat won't automatically run OCR.

Regards

Amal

Got your issue resolved? Please label the response as 'Correct Answer' to help your fellow community members find a solution to similar problems.

[Amal. · Accepted solution]

Hi @John28969006cnl0 

Hope you are doing well, and sorry to hear that.

The OCR is turned on by default. Therefore, when you open a scanned document for editing, the current page is converted to editable text. Depending on whether you want to convert your scanned documents to editable text or not, you can turn off/on the automatic OCR option.

To turn off/on automatic OCR:

1. Choose Tools > Edit PDF.
2. To turn off automatic OCR, do the following:
   In the right pane, clear the Recognize text checkbox. From next time, Acrobat won't automatically run OCR.

Regards

Amal

Got your issue resolved? Please label the response as 'Correct Answer' to help your fellow community members find a solution to similar problems.

[John28969006cnl0]

This is correct, and the final step that got me home was clicking on the Settings option, then choosing Make all the pages editable.

Thank you for taking the time to help me out, Amal!

[Carol F Metzger]

The box is NOT checked, but it still insits on recognizing every file I open.

[Amal.]

Hi @Carol F Metzger 

Please go through the help page https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/edit-scanned-pdfs.html and see if that works for you.

Also, try to create a new test user profile with full admin rights in Win and try using the application there and check

~Amal

[oliver_7688]

And where is it in 2025? Honestly, I spent 30 min looking for a way to stop OCR. I'm getting really frustrated with Adobe products and the constant updates, I don't want more, I want less, more stable, cheaper. 

[Gregor5CF5]

Hi, I had exactly the same problem. I wanted to delete some objects on different layers. I had checked that the checkbox mentioned above was unclicked. But every time, I came to a special layer the scanning begun and all layers were gone. Nice! But I was able to stop the process with clicking the now active checkbox again. (Interesting, too: I opened the file in advance in Illustrator and the text to be scanned was editable.)

[russell_4123 · Accepted solution]

I found this in another answer post:

 It's on by default for Adobe,  to fix this go into reg edit and change the setting below. 

I just completed this 30 minutes ago on my Windows 11 laptop with Adobe Pro DC and it worked like a champ.

Windows 10 Registry Key to Enable/Disable:

HKCU\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\PaperCapturePlugin\

[DWORD] bEnableTextEditingScannedDocument

Disabled: 0x00000000

Enabled: 0x00000001 

[S. S]

Hi @russell_4123,

Hope you are doing well.

Thanks for sharing what worked for you.

Marking this as a correct answer for future users to use as a reference.

Regards,
Souvik.

[Kim L]

I agree with your frustrations.  The current 2025 Adobe Acrobat Pro OCR scans my images and changes them to text boxes.  Then when I need to replace that image, it's in a lot of mini text boxes that I have to delete (sometimes one at a time) and re-insert a new image.  I don't even have the "settings, recognize text" things on the panel on the right (nor on the left for that matter).  The right panel only has the stuff for making PDFs accessible.  The OCR tool doesn't have anything in it to change settings or disable it.  And the "Help" link doesn't let you ask questions, it just gives you videos that don't have anything to do with the problems afore mentioned.  Thank you to Russell_4123 and Gregor 5CF5 for sharing the programming information to change that on a system level.  I'm sure that is handy for people who understand what they are referencing, or who have Windows 10, but I am not a programmer and don't understand that, nor do I have Windows 10, so I'm still at a high level of frustration about this.  I just want to know what to do within the currently updated Adobe Acrobat Pro program so that my images stay images and don't turn into text boxes?