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Enlightened_worldview15A8
Participating Frequently
May 19, 2015
Answered

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

  • May 19, 2015
  • 16 replies
  • 62167 views

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?

    Correct answer AnandSri

    PS: You cannot convert an image to text with Acrobat. You seem to say that you can OCR an image, and that is not true. 

     


    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.

     

    16 replies

    K
    kyle_0029
    Participant
    June 26, 2025

    Hello from the future, just in case anyone, like me, ends up here to answer this question at some point, let me tell you how to do it here in 2025.

     

    Click on Edit, then click the Edit Settings gear wheel in the top of the Edit panel. Uncheck recognize scanned text. They really did add a checkbox for it. A nice surprise.

    D
    devGuru411
    Participating Frequently
    October 12, 2023

    Adobe - STOP!  Just STOP! 
    Every time you add a new "feature" that nobody uses, you slow down or break your product, then you ignore all of us loyal users who have been using your products for years (without issue).  This new Adobe Acrobat is SLOW AS CHRISTMAS.  It takes nearly 30 seconds to load a simple 2 page PDF.  I dont need all the extra "crap" you have added - I just need a way to read PDF's (most of the time) and occassionally do light editing like changing page order or rotating a scanned image ... just give me a way to go back to what we had - please!

      D
      defaultfv9rbli2zh04
      Participant
      February 26, 2022
      1.  Open pdf in Acrobat
      2. Wait for the first page to be scanned, or cancel immediately (this time only)
      3. Sellect Edit menu
      4. Uncheck "Recognize Text" under settings (this will prevent future)
      5.  Close and open any document.

       

        D
        default586f04qon6hx
        Participant
        January 9, 2024

        This option is grayed out for me.  I have become extremely unhappy with Acrobat.  Get it together, folks.  I have a 1500 page document of scanned hand-written notes, no interest in or hope of ever doing OCR on them.  I just want to index them and add links here and there.  Every time I got to a new page, I get the "converting to text" action and then I have to undo it because to totally butchers the page.

        It must be miserable to work on this team.

          R
          Rick Meikle
          Known Participant
          February 6, 2019

          Refreshing this thread, Acrobat Pro DC (CC 2019) does not behave as Adobe describes in their online user guide (link below), which says "To turn off automatic OCR: In the right pane, clear the Recognize text check box. From next time [sic], Acrobat won't automatically run OCR and convert a scanned document to editable text." Acrobat honors that setting for each subsequent file opened, but only until quitting Acrobat. Upon reopening Acrobat, the setting is lost and when going to the Edit PDF pane in the first opened PDF file, Acrobat always recognizes text on the first page and turns on the "Recognize Text" check box. This needs to either be fixed or an option provided to make it stick.

          https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/edit-scanned-pdfs.html
          M
          mikejn1
          Participating Frequently
          April 28, 2016

          Me too.

          i really want to turn off OCR recognition. I will try the workaround of 'revert to image' on a trivial document.

          But I have several documents that I have added text to and I dont want to revert to image on those. Each time the next page gets focus, OCR starts.

          Really should be an off option.

          I am marking student maths work, some of which is scans. I add text

            AnkitBal
            Adobe Employee
            AnkitBal
            Adobe Employee
            May 13, 2016

            Hi,

            If you are updated to the latest version of Acrobat DC, you would be able to turn OCR recognition off by clicking on "Revert to Image". The option is now sticky, and editing subsequent pages/documents will not run OCR recognition.

            N
            NHDesigns
            Participant
            June 17, 2016

            That is not good enough, disable the feature entirely with an option in preference, and disable as part of the loading of "Edit PDF" Talk about blatantly ignoring or request to disable the feature entire. Could you not do these half measures, and add the option to disable OCR entirely across Acrobat DC.

              XZ315
              XZ315
              Participating Frequently
              April 27, 2016

              It appears I may have been overly critical of the crop features.  counter-intuitively, the "sensible" crop feature has been moved to the Organize Pages tab.  I don't know why there isn't a crop button in this tab, but if you right-click on a page and hit crop it will bring up the standard crop dialogue. 

                M
                Maximumblast
                Participating Frequently
                April 27, 2016

                same here, please make this optional. all i want to do is crop some scanned pages in acrobat and everything gets messed up by the OCR. i love the built in OCR when i need to use it, but only when i need it.

                  M
                  mr_r2145028
                  Participant
                  March 10, 2016

                  The fact that I cannot disable the Page Recognition function is absolutely garbage. It is wasting a lot of my time and my boss isn't very happy about it. Thanks Adobe

                    keitht5
                    keitht5
                    Participant
                    January 6, 2016

                    I too have struggled with this issue since receiving Adobe Pro DC last spring in my print shop. I am happy to see an off switch was added, I needed it off this morning.

                    P
                    Adobe Employee
                    Priyanja
                    Adobe Employee
                    October 20, 2015

                    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.

                      P
                      PMDigital_Teri
                      Participating Frequently
                      August 23, 2016

                      THANK YOU. I agree with some others that I would like a clearer checkbox to turn this on and off rather than the more obscure sticky feature. But I will take this.

                      For me this is great. What I have to do with some problem files is convert everything to a high resolution TIFF file. Then sometime I want to edit the tif by cropping the page, deleting the image on a page, or opening it in Photoshop.

                      The auto-ocr when clicking on Edit PDF was a real pain, now this should help a lot.

                      risharmaAdobe
                      Adobe Employee
                      risharmaAdobe
                      Adobe Employee
                      February 2, 2017

                      Welcome. For now, this will help you out of your misery. We will certainly think about Preferences option but until then I believe this sticky feature solves the issues for most of you.

                      Thanks

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