OCR problem

[maglynn]

My Acrobat DC 2015 no longer automatically converts images or has an option under Edit tools to do that. I want to cut and paste text instead of typing the whole thing out. Any help getting my OCR back will be appreciated.

[gary_sc]

I'm assuming you mean your Acrobat Standard DC because Acrobat Reader DC never had OCR capability and you're not saying Acrobat Pro DC.

Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious but a number of folks complain they have Acrobat DC and ask why they can't do a bunch of things with the free application.

Now for real questions: How are you processing your pages. How are you scanning, what format are you saving the images at (if you are saving the images), what settings do you have set for this.

And please understand, your 2015 software is long out of lifetime, so nothing is going to get fixed BUT let's see if we can find some mechanism for you to keep going with what you have.

One quick option I can think of: Don't use Acrobat to do the scanning but rather use the scanning software that came with your scanner. Scan the pages at TIF images and save them in a convenient folder. Let's say you have a multiple page PDF: select all of the images and drop them onto the Acrobat icon wherever it might be. Acrobat will ask if you want all pages merged into one document (say "yes"). This will automatically convert them into a PDF and do the OCR. If you save the images as JPG or PNG or whatever, this will not work.

Good luck and let me know

[maglynn]

Thank you, Gary.

This was my first time using the Community Support and I  should have been more specific. I am using Acrobat Pro DC I am glad to know about the scanning trick and am sure it will come in handy, but by default, if I opened pdf images that were sent to me or saved from the web, the PDF image was already formatted to be able to select text and cut and paste it -- OR -- the OCR process would start automatically. I am trying to understand why that suddenly changed.

As for the 2015 software being long out of lifetime, I understand that means that software I paid $200 for -- as well as whatever I paid for the 2012 software I upgraded from -- is no longer supported, but what kind of company forces people to keep payong hundreds of dollars for basic functions???!!!!!

[gary_sc]

Hi Maglynn,

First off let me start by saying that I, and just about everyone else on these boards are not Adobe employees. We are just "glutten for punishment" volunteers who've been using the software for many many years and do what we can to help others.

That said, let me open a window (as it were) on the problem with software and why one has to occasionally get updated versions of that software. First off, things change. I'm willing to bet that you are not using the same version of the OS you had in 2015 and it's also possible that you are not on the same machine. Software is not written to be eternal because the commands that it calls out for are for specific parts of the OS and/or the computer that's running the software and OS. I do not know about you but I was using Acrobat before the Internet so the software used at that time could not run on today's computers or today's Operating Systems. It couldn't even start up.

Next in line is that people want both improvements and new features. As the OS and the computers improve, software companies are doing what they can to take advantage of better processors, video cards, faster SSDs and RAM, as well as trying to quash bugs that show up after the software has left the beta testers hands. (And this is not to mention that when one bug is fixed, it can potentially cause a new bug to show it's ugly head.)

Now, you talk about PDFs that are sent to you that are already searchable. Please note that there are many ways to create PDFs and each will contribute (or not) to their PDF. If you create a PDF from a website, Word, Indesign, Excel, and many others, any PDF (whether generated by the OS under the "Save as PDF..." or by Acrobat "Save as Adobe PDF...," that document will be searchable. But, if you create a PDF from (say) Photoshop, Illustrator, a screenshot, or scanning software, it will NOT be searchable. What you have then is a bitmapped image that is in the PDF format. In other words, just because a document is a PDF does not mean that it is by default searchable.

In addition, just because you've opened a PDF in Acrobat does not always self-generate a searchable PDF. In fact, the only file type that I'M aware of that can do that is the TIF format (as mentioned earlier). 

If you open a PDF that is not searchable, there are several ways to make it searchable: One is to select the Scan & OCR tool and from there select "Recognize Text" option in the horizontal options. Alternatively, if you select the Edit tool, it will automatically OCR each page as you scroll through as well as recognize any images on the page so you can do some editing (as well as removal) of the images. This is the slowest and least efficient way to do this.

Let me finish by letting you know that Acrobat has NO scanning capability whatsoever. Rather it utilizes a plugin called TWAIN to create a bridge so that Acrobat can access your comptuer's scanner. On the Mac it's a bit worse as the Apple folks consider TWAIN a potential virus access point so they provide a link to their own software (Image Capture) which is the worst scanning software I've ever encountered. I never scan from within Acrobat and always use either my scanner's software or a high quality 3rd party software and save the TIF images in a folder on my desktop to convert to PDF and OCR after the scanning is all done.

In this (way too long) note, I'm not trying to make excuses for Adobe, rather I'm trying to point out some common misconseptions about software in general as well as some brutal hard facts about the software industry. BTW, it's not just software that loses it's value. I'm sure you're aware that you can spend $30,000 on a new car, drive it off the lot and you'd be lucky to get $20,000 for that same are at that point. A week later? Figure $15,000, maybe.

Good luck, I hope I've made some points that you'll consider.

[maglynn]

Thank you again, Gary, for being so thorough. I do take your considerations into account but still feel in this case that I am being gouged. But I did not assume you were an employee of Adobe and certainly was not directing my complaint to you! A final note before addressing the issue: If I drove a car off the lot I wouldn't care about its resale value and would expect to still be able to drive it 6 years later without too many headaches.

In any case, I learned a lot from your explanation but am confused because I don't see a Scan & OCR tool (which I believe was once there!) And the other option, selecting the Edit tool to automatically OCR each page is what I am saying I once had and now do not.

Thank you again for being so generous tith your time and expertise 😉

[Bernd Alheit]

The option is available at Edit PDF.

[maglynn]

I wish it were 😉

[Bernd Alheit]

It is available in Acrobat Pro DC: