Turn off / disable Convert to Text Option in Acrobat Pro DC

Report · May 19, 2015

Since the update on Acrobat to Pro DC, I keep having to click on Revert to Image, which would be fine but sometimes to revert to image, it undoes the changes I may have recently changed. The only workaround I found was to make changes on the picture (in Photoshop) then save the PDF, close it and reopen to make additional changes. I cannot stress this enough, I NEED the fonts to stay outlined so I don't get any errors when transferring postscripts from PC to Mac. And I'm talking about files that are exported from other programs, not scanned.

Anyone know how to disable the Convert to Text option?

Report · Apr 01, 2025

Hello!

I hope you are doing well.

To disable the automatic conversion of scanned documents to editable text (OCR) in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, follow these steps:

Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC:
- Launch Adobe Acrobat and open your scanned document.
Access the 'Edit PDF' Tool:
- Click on the "Tools" tab.
- Select "Edit PDF" from the available options.
Disable Automatic OCR:
- In the right pane, locate and uncheck the "Recognize text" option. This prevents Acrobat from automatically running OCR on scanned documents in the future.

By unchecking the "Recognize text" option, Acrobat will no longer automatically convert scanned documents to editable text during editing. For more detailed information, refer to this help article: https://adobe.ly/4caFp5M

Also, please ensure you have the latest version of Acrobat installed, and check for any pending updates from the Menu > help > check for updates, install the updates, restart the app and the machine, and check. For more information, see this: https://adobe.ly/44adelt

If you wish to raise a feature request, please use this URL and submit it to the product team.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

View solution in original post

Report · May 20, 2015

If there is no text in the pdf page, we convert the image to text. Yes you have to revert it back to image and any modifications done will be lost. Could you please explain what kind of changes you are trying to do to the pdf imported from other programs? As of now there is no way to disable the Convert to Text option. We will definitely look into this and see how we can improve it.

Thanks

Varinder

Report · May 20, 2015

I work at a print shop and deal with PDFs that have a lot of type and images. Customers bring in PDFs that needs to be sent as a postscript but I need to edit their pictures because sometimes they're too dark, on the press it only gets darker. I have to go to every picture, sometimes there's 5, other times there's 20, and make each one lighter in Photoshop. I flatten (to outline text) the PDF first so no changes are made to how it was set up then I edit each picture. It has happened that when I click on Edit, it'll change the position of the text, which is irritating and time consuming. I don't mind working on each picture to lighten them, it's a quick edit in Photoshop but it becomes a pain when I take it back into the PDF with it converting the text each time.

Report · May 25, 2015

Varinder,

Please don't look to improve it. Add the ability to disable it. In many workflows, this adjustment is just not acceptable. I know there may be many (who knows most) people would like to see scans OCRd by default, but this will almost never be the case in the prepress world. It will never be the case when you need to scan to pdf and be re-assured for legal reasons that the image was never altered.

The original idea behind PDF was to make an accurate rendition of the creator's intentions. PDFs were so to speak locked in digital stone. I would hate to think that people could open old documents and accidentally change them ruining archived documents.

Mike

Report · May 25, 2015

Mike,

Thanks for the feedback. It is duly noted and we will consider it in our future releases. I agree with you that there are cases where you would not want the PDFs to be altered. However in this case I am explicitly clicking on "Edit PDF". So it is clear that I want to edit the PDF. But what is not clear is whether I want to edit it as an image or convert it into text and then edit it (in case of scanned document). By default we chose to convert it into text and then enable editing on it. The idea was to make it work seamlessly for scanned documents. Think about a scenario where I have a scanned document and I want to edit it. In this case, all I have to do is click on 'Edit PDF" and rest of the processing (running OCR, converting the bitmap to actual fonts and enabling the PDF for editing) is done seamlessly in the background. We also provided an option to revert it back to image, in case I wanted to edit it as an image.

We chose this option keeping our users' convenience in mind. However based on the feedback we have received, we will definitely evaluate this again.

Thanks

Varinder

Report · Jul 08, 2015

I understand. We probably get more requests on how to OCR (or used to) than many other topics---especially in Reader ;-). In looking at the interface, a simple check-box for auto-ocr would be helpful. I can live with checking or unchecking whatever default you choose. However, In looking at the choices, I rarely use OCR, but use the others much more often. That is not to say, I don't OCR. It is just that inadvertent destruction of important documents is inevitable and too many people do not use backups.

Report · Jul 09, 2015

Hi All,

It seems to me that OCR function is more of a specialty function. I do not know that most people who use Acrobat are using it to scan images to text. That's something that would be a perfect functionality add-on for Adobe Reader. People who work in Acrobat use it for more advanced causes, such as to compile large documents, portfolios and for prepress. And I think that at that level these professionals can navigate themselves through the settings to click on or off the OCR. For any particular page or document.

I agree completely with all the above requests. It is really not acceptable to have to un-do the changes made to scanned documents. Now envision this auto OCR being performed on a documents that is 2500-3000 pages long? It takes 5 minutes to wait for it to do what it's doing and then 5 minutes or more to wait to un-do. It is so-so inefficient but the main concern is that this is an archived document compilation and because of the autoOCR there could potentially be changes made to the document that are not supposed to be made. Any time I need pages inserted, deleted or repositioned, the OCR is also being performed. I need to be able to work on pages regardless the OCR. I also need be able add / remove / modify hyperlinks regardless of OCR. All these functions, essential to large document compilation, are piled together under "Edit" and it makes sense, but having autoOCR initiate each time makes no sense. Please give me an option to disable the autoOCR, ASAP. Thanks.

Report · Jul 30, 2015

I just want to say I agree with the requests to be able to disable the automatic ocr/text conversion when clicking edit PDF. Sometimes I just want to edit one page inside the document, or edit the whole thing as an image...having to wait for Acrobat to do a text recognition step I don't need (on every page I scroll past!) is a waste of time & disrupts my workflow. I'd like to be able to decide to turn it off if I want to ... it makes the program very annoying to use sometimes. I don't like someone else's view of how a workflow should be done forced on me. Let me have the option to turn it off.

Thank you.

Report · Aug 01, 2015

I would also like the option to turn "automatic OCR" on or off as I crop all of the time and don't want to have to want until the image is converted to text. Please bring back the "crop tool" function at the top toolbar so it's always accessible.

Thanks

Report · Aug 28, 2015

Agree with all the above. This needs fixing. Though I understand the rationale behind the recognition, it's incredibly inconvenient to me several times a day. e.g. Today I need to recreate a business card, like for like, from a pdf. I need to extract the bitmap and at present cannot. The only option is to rasterize the pdf which is frustrating to say the least. PLEASE add the ability to disable the conversion. It's a useful tool, but not always!

Report · Jul 09, 2015

"The original idea behind PDF was to make an accurate rendition of the creator's intentions." - so true and now it's not true anymore. All documents, in order to preserve them, would need to be saved as PDF/A. It looks like autoOCR in Acrobat DC doesn't touch PDF/A documents (which is little comforting), even when doing manipulations with pages. It is only proper to save all "archived" documents as PDF/A and I am a big advocate of PDF/A standard. However, if archived documents were "archived" as regular PDFs then that's a problem and a waste of time. Which is why it is so important to use PDF standards which are appropriate for each type of document. PDF/A, PDF/X, etc.

Report · Jan 05, 2016

What about cropping scanned historical blueprints. I work in a historical archive and we need to crop prints and cannot in new Adobe pro because it shuts the system down when going to Edit (to crop - the only place it's possible) because recognition begins on 150 year old scanned blueprints., How do you turn it off?

Useless program at this point for our company.

Report · Feb 01, 2017

I am a new user to Adobe Acrobat Pro. I am scanning dozens of family historical documents written in another language, mostly in cursive, so I do not want any of the text converted. I scan them in strictly as images. I do not want to have to un-OCR them. I have found out how to do this, but it would have definitely been better to have an easily found setting, as in Edit --> Preferences, that I could set so that by default OCR is not run. Until I looked in the forum and tried a few different suggestion, it was a real nuisance, and very slow. I hope that in the future, the preferences will contain this setting.

Report · Jul 15, 2017

An example: in my case, I try to assemble an onscreen version .pdf from multiple print-ready .pdf's. So e.g. I have to crop the file that's used to print the cover (remove the back). But Acrobat is taking a lot of time to make the book's title editable. I do not need that. This behaviour makes it unusable. I would prefer a dialog to decide what Acrobat must do.

Report · Jul 15, 2017

From post 21 by https://forums.adobe.com/people/Priyanja Hi everyone, Thanks for your patience. We understand that this is an annoying behaviour and therefore we have a solution for you. In the latest version of Acrobat DC, you can disable the "auto convert to text". Just open any scanned PDF and click on Edit PDF. On first launch, Acrobat will convert the image to text. Now all you have to do is click on the 'Revert to Image' button on the Right Hand Pane. Acrobat now remembers this setting and will not convert any scanned document to text unless you change it from here.

Report · Jul 18, 2017

Michael and Adobe,

The fact that this thread is still going years later, and the sidebar full of similar topics to turn this feature off, makes me think that it is a feature that needs to be OFF by default. Those who want it can turn it back on. Still not upgrading.

Report · Jul 18, 2017

brooksm84330887,

While I may agree with you, clearly Adobe does not. If Adobe listened to me you would still be using a program called Acrobat Exchange .

Report · Aug 16, 2017

Wow, yea I forgot this was still open. I've stayed up to date with the latest Acrobat Pro. They have removed this feature and is optional. The newest Acrobat Pro is also faster and has more features for editing PDFs. It crashes on startup on occasion but it may just be me since I have 5 big programs open all at once. Other than that, I have no complaints.

Report · Nov 17, 2021

Is there a way to edit only certain areas of text vs. the whole document? I use an automotive scan tool in my business, and the reports that it prints out has the manufacturer of the tool across the top, so I use it to edit the manufacturer out to avoid a client deciding to purchase the equipment for themselves and cutting me out of the loop.

When Acrobat converts these reports, it changes things across the whole document though. It regularly changes my website/email info (it adds an extra space in between some of the lettering which renders the link useless for obvious reasons). The report includes many vertical lines to break up sections and heading, which Acrobat changes into "I"s. It occasionally moves things around and text overlaps. I noticed on one of the reports it changed "DTC" into "OTC". I don't have time to go through and proof read every word of every report hoping to find all the mistakes, I just want to take five letters off the top of the report so if there was a way to highlight only a specific area to convert it would be extremely useful.

Report · Aug 28, 2015

Clicking "Edit" does not mean I want to change the document text. In my case, often I type "Exhibit A" using the Typewriter feature, and add a Bates stamp. It is NOT acceptable that my scan, of a signed document, is changed other than the way I am changing it. Also, opening a scan of a medical record should not OCR my pages. Doctor handwriting can't be OCR'ed, all it does is make for huge, error filled files.

There needs to be a overall, general preference to Auto-OCR or not. Your power-users are quite comfortable changing our own settings. This needs a fix, or I will not upgrade. Uninstalled the trial version as soon as I realized what DC does.

Report · Aug 31, 2015

Hi,

As Varinder mentions above, we have looked into both improving the experience of PDF Editing in Acrobat DC and ensuring that OCR is not run on every scanned image during Edit, and working on solutions to resolve them.

Please stay tuned for a future update.

Regards,

-Ankit Bal

Report · Sep 29, 2015

Running OCR every time someone wants to edit a PDF at all was probably the worst idea of the past decade and is completely ignorant of the way that Acrobat is used in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction/Real Estate industry. The 2nd worst idea was not enabling flattening of PDFs and forcing me to go through and re-print the document to PDF again. Oh, what's that you say, I should use the password protect option? Please. If you think flattening and password protecting are even remotely similar functions or are used for even remotely similar purposes, you have your head up your behind. This is why we're all buying Bluebeam now.

Report · Jul 17, 2017

Please fix. It's annoying when wanting to view a scanned file but you have to wait for OCR to finish, I don't want that feature.

Report · Jul 18, 2017

nicolasr90157356 wrote
Please fix. It's annoying when wanting to view a scanned file but you have to wait for OCR to finish, I don't want that feature.

When you view a scanned file Acrobat doesn't perform OCR.

Report · Sep 01, 2015

I just wanted to pop in to say "me too". Actually I created an account all so that I could do that. I'm working with some older technical outline drawings that I can only get as tifs or jpgs. I need to put them together into single PDFs to add to product webpages. What I don't need is to have Acrobat run OCR on each page of a 30 page PDF. Literally one incorrect character conversion could get my company sued. Please add a way to turn this off. Why waste time writing code to "make it better" when all we want is the ability to turn it off?

Until we have the option to turn it off I'll be uninstalling DC in favor of Acrobat XI.