

#SEARCHABLE PDF CONVERTER HOW TO#
How to Make a PDF Searchable (Without Adobe) If you can't then it means your PDF is not searchable. If you can select or highlight text, then your then your PDF is searchable. To figure out if you PDF is searchable or not, open your PDF and try searching or selecting text with your keyboard or mouse. How to Find Out if Your PDF is Searchable However, any PDF that has had OCR performed on it can be read by any PDF reader. Note: In order to perform Optical Character Recognition on a PDF file, you will need special software. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is used to read the image of the text and add a layer of real text on top, thus converting the document to a text-based PDF. OCR PDFs: OCR PDFs are image-based PDFs that have been turned into text-based PDFs. Thus the text won't be searchable, selected, or copy and pasted.ģ. So rather than typed text in the document, it’s simply an image of the text.

Image-based PDFs: Image PDFs are created through scanning paper documents, taking photographs, screenshots, and the like. Text-based PDFs: Text-based PDFs are created when saving the document directly as a PDF from a word processor such as Microsoft Word, or similar applications.Ģ. To understand why some PDFs have searchable text, while others do not, let’s explore the different types of PDFs you may encounter. You may have noticed that some PDFs are searchable while others are not. What is a Searchable PDF?īy “searchable” PDF, we’re referring to a PDF document with text that you’re able to select, search, copy, and paste. We’ve provided a few alternative methods below. This guide is meant to help you learn how to easily make your PDFs searchable. If you’ve wanted to search, select, copy or paste text in a PDF but were unable to, it means that your PDF wasn’t searchable. Learn how to make PDF text searchable, selectable, and copy/pastable.
