How-to

How to extract text from a scanned PDF

A scanned PDF is an image of text, so you can't select, search, copy or translate it. DocTranslating's OCR PDF tool converts a scanned or image-based PDF into a real, selectable text layer in a few clicks: open the tool, upload your scan, optionally set the document language for faster and more accurate results, and click Extract text. It supports 50+ languages, handwritten text and right-to-left scripts like Arabic and Hebrew. Once you have the OCR'd PDF back, you can translate it, search it, or copy from it like any normal document.

Updated June 19, 2026 · 8 min read

If you've tried to select text in a PDF and nothing highlights, or searched it with Ctrl+F and got no results, your PDF is scanned — it's a picture of a page, not text. That's also why translating it, copying from it, or editing it doesn't work. The fix is OCR (Optical Character Recognition), which reads the image and builds a real text layer underneath. This guide shows how to do that with DocTranslating's OCR PDF tool, and what to do with the result.

How do I know if my PDF is scanned?

Three quick checks tell you whether a PDF needs OCR:

• Try to select a line of text. If your cursor won't highlight individual words — or selects the whole page as one image — it's scanned.
• Search with Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on Mac). If a word you can clearly see returns no match, there's no text layer to search.
• Watch for the in-app notice. When you open a scanned file in DocTranslating, a banner appears reading "This document appears to be scanned…" with an Open OCR PDF Tool button — the app has detected there's no usable text layer.

Step-by-step: extract text from a scanned PDF

1. 1

   Open the OCR PDF tool

   Go to the OCR PDF tool directly, or — if you were already trying to translate a scanned file — click the "Open OCR PDF Tool" button on the "This document appears to be scanned" notice. Both routes open the same tool.

2. 2

   Upload your scanned PDF

   Select the scanned or image-based PDF you want to convert. This is the file where text currently can't be selected or searched.

3. 3

   Optionally set the document language

   If you know the language of the document, set it. This is optional — the tool auto-detects language — but specifying it gives faster and more accurate results, especially for non-Latin scripts like Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic or Devanagari, and for handwritten text.

4. 4

   Click Extract text and download the result

   The tool reads the pages and rebuilds a real, selectable text layer while keeping the original look of the document. Download the OCR'd PDF — you can now select, search and copy its text, and it's ready to be translated.

What the OCR PDF tool handles well

DocTranslating's OCR is one of the most capable engines available, and it goes well beyond simple printed English:

• 50+ languages — including languages with non-Latin scripts.
• Handwritten text — clear handwriting is recognised, not just printed type.
• Right-to-left scripts — Arabic, Hebrew and Persian are handled with good accuracy, including correct reading order.
• Mixed-language pages — documents containing more than one language on a page.
• Everyday scan quality — photos of documents and typical office scans, not just pristine flatbed output.

After OCR: translate your document

Once you have the OCR'd PDF, translating it is the same as translating any normal PDF — upload it, choose your languages and a translation engine, and download the translated copy. Running OCR first, as a separate step, has one big advantage: you can read through the extracted text and confirm it's correct before you translate. Translating an unverified scan risks compounding two kinds of error — a misread word becomes a confidently mistranslated word — so checking the OCR output first is the single best way to get an accurate final translation.

Tips for the best OCR results

OCR accuracy depends heavily on the quality of the scan you feed it. A few things noticeably improve results:

• Set the document language when you know it — it's the single easiest way to improve accuracy and speed.
• Use a clear, straight scan. Rescan skewed or rotated pages so the text sits on horizontal lines.
• Prefer higher resolution. Scans around 300 DPI or higher give the OCR sharper characters to work with than low-resolution images.
• Improve contrast on faded documents so the text stands out clearly from the background.
• Make sure the file isn't password-protected — encrypted PDFs can't be read until they're unlocked.

Alternative: OCR on PDFEquips

If you're already working inside PDFEquips — for example converting, compressing or merging PDFs — it also has an OCR tool you can use to make a scanned PDF searchable. Either route gives you an OCR'd file you can then bring back to DocTranslating to translate. Use whichever fits your workflow.