making changes on paper document

[David33215156qjpa]

hi there , im a new user to adobe and computers and  am trying to make changes to a paper document ,  am old dinosaur and need baby steps , can anyone help please>?

[David33215156qjpa]

apologies but am showing up my lack of knowledge here,, i have clicked on the links that were sent , but each time it takes me back to my original post? what am i doing wrong?

[gary_sc · Accepted solution]

Hi, @David33215156qjpa, I think we may need to set on some terms here. A paper document is, well, paper. Acrobat is used to read a digital PDF, fill out a digital PDF, comment on a digital PDF, etc. 

Acrobat Pro can make limited changes in a digital PDF, such as fixing the spelling of a name, changing a date, etc. It cannot make layout changes or global changes in a document. 

Can you elaborate on what you're working with and what kind of changes you hope to make? Also, the BEST places to make changes are in the original application you created the digital document. So, if you used Word to create the document, that's the best place to make changes in the document — and then remake the PDF of that document.

[David33215156qjpa]

hi gary did you get my last message explaining what im trying to do regarding changes to the paper document?

[gary_sc]

Hi, @David33215156qjpa, no, I did not. I do not see it in here, nor did I receive a DM. 

Please try again, sorry.

[David33215156qjpa]

hi gary, what i am trying to do is change names and dates, i was informed that all i had to do was scan the paper  document then i could make the changes, but thats where ive reached a block,  i dont need to make any other changes,and i dont know how to comment or fill out a pdf file,my computer knowledge is very limited and in unknown territory here ,any help would be much appreciated, but lay mans terms please , thanks david

[gary_sc]

Hi David, I'll see what I can do to help you, but I do have several questions. 

First, and most important, what version of Acrobat are you using? Is it Acrobat Reader, or something else. 

Next, has your document gone through OCR? That is, can you select text in the document, or, when you click on the document, does the whole page turn blue?

fwiw, I'm in California and I'll be out all morning tomorrow. 

[David33215156qjpa]

morning gary david here , apologies for the late reply , had some family issues to deal with,re; our prev chat ,  i downloaded the adobe pro app on mnthly subscription, i can scan document & used custom settings , so ocr was enabled , when i go to edit pdf when i click document it goes blue (yes), also if i click text all i get is 4blue dots that make a square, i have looked at (you tube ) tutorials , but the screen they show is different from what i have , i am in edinburgh scotland , thanks 

[gary_sc]

Hi @David33215156qjpa, (Edinburgh, love it. I was there (Scotland) for several weeks back in 2014. My wife and I do hope to get back. We had a wonderful time!)

I hate to delay this one more day, but I have a morning engagement today and will not be able to respond sufficiently until much later today or tomorrow. I just wanted to let you know I saw your note.

Till then,

[David33215156qjpa]

hi, gary much appreciated your help thus far and we both have things we need to attend too, and thank you for your reply, am glad both you & your good lady had an enjoyable time in scotland ,hope the natives were friendly ,,as a nation, we are generally (Nissed as a Pewt),, swap the CAPS around,,,,,(Drunk) but we have some nice scenery here (am biased) of course , chat soon david

[gary_sc]

Hi David, Very sorry for the extra delay, but I, like most of the other folks here are volunteers and are not employees of Adobe. By that I'm referring to the fact that none of us are on the clock (so to speak), and I get on the forums when I can.

And yes, we were treated WONDERFULLY in Scotland. We happened to be there during the vote, and as fate would have it, we were in Glasgow for the night of the vote. It was amazing and wonderful during that historic occasion. Since my wife and I had no dog in that fight, we clearly saw both sides of the issue. However, we were extreemely furious with the PM for breaking any and every promise he made to Scotland. 

Well, back to Acrobat Pro. You didn't state how you set the scanning software to scan and you didn't supply a lot of information of what was done, but when you state that if you click on the document you get a blue box, that does tell me that you now have a picture of the original that is saved as a PDF. Now, you need to convert that picture into a searchable document. 

I'm going to assume that you are using Acrobat Pro 2023 so look where you need to click to access the tools to convert the document by OCR

Once you've clicked on this, you'll see these options:

 At this point, assuming you have your document opened in Acrobat Pro, select the option boxed in red: "in This file." Click on this and then click Recognize Text. Then save your document and you should be good to go to edit it. Depending on the quality of the scan, your results here could good, fine, or OK. If you need more information on how to get a good scan (assuming you get OK results), let me know and I can add to your knowledge on this subject. (I have a reputation of scaring folks from giving them too much information too early. :>))

If your document has very unique fonts, there may be an issue of having any text you add or change to match what is there, but let's hope that that doesn't happen.

Let me know how it works out.