OCR PDF

Make scanned PDFs searchable (coming soon).

A scanned page looks like text but is really a picture, so you cannot search or copy from it. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the image and adds a hidden, selectable text layer.

This tool is in progress on PDFbolt. When it goes live it will turn image-only PDFs into searchable documents and improve the accuracy of converting scans to Word or Excel.

How OCR will work

1. Choose the scanned PDF you want to make searchable.
2. Select the document language for accurate recognition.
3. Run OCR to add a searchable text layer.
4. Download the searchable PDF.

Frequently asked questions

Is OCR available now?

It is in progress — visible in the directory but not runnable yet.

Does OCR change how the page looks?

No. It adds an invisible text layer behind the existing image.

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