How to tell if a document is editable from its file name/icon?

[jaineh55932689]

How can I see at a glance, if a PDF will be OCRd and allow me to enlarge text, or is just a photo?

[try67]

You can't. You have to open it and even then it's not immediately apparent.

[~graffiti · Accepted solution]

There is nothing on an icon that will tell you that. You just have to open the document and find out.

That being said, editable or not, you can't do anything like that with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. You need the full version of Acrobat to edit.

[jaineh55932689]

Thanks - that's confusing then.  Also what is the correct terminology to use - is it editable and non-editable or fillable and flat - or something else

[Test Screen Name]

None of them. It isn't really a type of PDF at all. Some PDFs contain text and some don't. Some have a mixture of scans and text. Could be anything. You have to try to edit it to see whether a PDF suits your wishes.

[~graffiti]

Almost all pdf files are to some extent editable. Whether fillable, flattened, OCR's, non-OCR'd...etc.

An example of a non-editable pdf would be one that has security preventing any editing. But you have to have the proper tools to edit and sometimes it's not super easy to do depending on the type of editing you want to do.

[jaineh55932689]

Thanks.  I'm interested in enlarging text (and then line wrapping) so just interested to see immediately if I am given a file - whether it needs to be OCRd in another programme (I use Abby) first. 

[~graffiti]

OCR is OCR. Doesn't matter what app does it (although some are better than others). I'm not so sure I personally would take this approach. To me it would be better to OCR the document, convert it to a Word document, edit that then create another pdf of the finished product if you need one. Editing a pdf file is not for the weak of heart.