How to Make a Scanned PDF Searchable on Windows

You can't search a scanned PDF because it holds a photo of each page, not the letters themselves. Flatbed scanners, phone scanning apps and office copiers usually save pages this way unless they run OCR while they scan.

The result looks like a document but behaves like a photo album. Find in Edge comes up empty, you can't select a line, and you can't copy an account number into an email; you end up retyping it.

Windows can read text off the screen, but it can't add a text layer to a PDF, so it can't make a scan searchable. Microsoft Edge shows the scan and lets you draw or add text on top, but it has no option to save recognized text into the file.

In Windows 11, Snipping Tool can read the text: press Windows logo key + Shift + S, capture part of the page, open the capture in Snipping Tool, click Text actions and copy the text. PowerToys, a free Microsoft app you install separately, adds Text Extractor, which copies text from anything on screen. Both are handy for grabbing a phone number or an address.

The catch is that nothing is written into the file. Edge's search, other apps and the person you send the PDF to still get a picture. For a document you'll search later or hand to someone else, the text has to be embedded in the PDF itself.

File Acture's OCR PDF runs text recognition on every scanned page, on your PC, and embeds the result as an invisible text layer over the original image. The page looks exactly as before, but you can search it, select lines and copy them.

Choose the language of the document before you start: telling the recognizer what to expect gives better results, especially with accents and other alphabets.

You can process several PDFs in one run. Each one gets a searchable copy saved as a new file in the folder you choose, and your original scans stay unchanged.

OCR is only as good as the scan, so straight, sharp pages give the best text.

• Pick the language. Choosing the document's language tells the recognizer what to expect, especially with accents and non-Latin scripts.
• Scan at 300 DPI. If you control the scanner, 300 DPI is a good setting for text. Much lower, and small print turns into blurry shapes that are hard to read.
• Straighten pages first. Turn sideways pages upright with Rotate Pages before you run OCR.
• Photos of documents? Put them into one PDF with Images to PDF, then run OCR on the result.
• Password-protected scan? Remove the password with Unlock PDF first, run OCR on the copy, then protect the searchable copy again with Protect PDF.
• Mind the file size. OCR adds text; it doesn't shrink images. If the copy is too big to send, run Compress PDF on it, and the text layer stays in place.

Online OCR services need your document on their servers, which matters for bank statements, medical letters and scans of ID cards. File Acture runs text recognition on your PC, so the pages never leave it; the free version needs an internet connection only to count its runs.

The free version includes 3 runs on each PC, with up to 5 PDFs per run. For long archives of scans, see pricing.

Uploading the result to a portal? Meet its size limit without ruining the scan.