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? 

[Serene_nature15C3 · 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

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[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.

[Serene_nature15C3]

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