Adobe Acrobat - Performing Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

adobe OCR

Summary

Optical character recognition (OCR) is a feature within Adobe Acrobat that recognizes non-interactable/non-searchable text within an image and converts that text into interactive and searchable text within a PDF document.

Prerequisites

Adobe Acrobat License
- Provided to all faculty and staff (not students).
- Installation instructions: Adobe Creative Cloud - Access and Installation.
OneDrive is installed on your computer.
- Installation instructions: Microsoft OneDrive - Information and Installation.
Write permissions to SharePoint file location being accessed.

Reference Items

Microsoft SharePoint - File Storage, Sharing, and Linking
- Article detailing how to sync files from SharePoint to OneDrive for easy access.
- Syncing files helps to OCR files in-place where they exist in SharePoint.

Add OneDrive Account to Adobe Acrobat (Optional)

OneDrive can be added to Adobe Acrobat as an integrated file location for easy access. This section's steps are not required to perform OCR below.

Open Adobe Acrobat by performing either of the following:
1. On a Mac device, click the Acrobat icon in your dock or search for Adobe in Finder.

On a Windows device, click the Adobe icon on your taskbar or by type: Adobe Acrobat in the search bar.

Within Acrobat's home screen, click: Add file storage, then click: Add beneath OneDrive.

Enter your KU email, then click: Continue.

Enter your single sign-on information and click: Login.

When prompted to confirm sign-in to Adobe, click: Continue.

Once added, your OneDrive account will appear on Adobe's home page as an other file storage location.

Perform OCR on Files

If not already open, open Adobe Acrobat by performing either of the following:
1. On a Mac device, click the Acrobat icon in your dock or search for Adobe in Finder.

On a Windows device, click the Adobe icon on your taskbar or by type: Adobe Acrobat in the search bar.

Once Adobe opens, on the home page, click: Recent, then click: See all tools.
- On a Mac device:

On a windows device:

Scroll down in the list of tools until you see Scan & OCR, then click: Open beneath it.

Depending upon how many files you wish to select, perform either of the following:
1. For a single file, click: Select a file. Continue to the "Single File OCR" section's step 5 below.
2. For multiple files, click: Or recognize text in multiple files. Go to the "Multiple Files OCR" section's step 9 below.

Single File OCR

Once Select a file is selected by you in step 4 above, a file selection menu will open. Navigate to the location of the file you wish to OCR, click the file's name, then click: Open.

Click: Start.

The file will open and you will have multiple options on the left. Under recognize text, click: In this file, then click: Recognize text.

Text within the image is now recognizable as searchable text. Click the save icon in the top-right to save a copy of the newly converted file.

Multiple File OCR

Once Or recognize text in multiple files is selected by you in step 4 above, click: + Add files, then select either: Add Files (if individual files need to be selected) or Add Folders (to select all files within one or more folders). A new file selection window will open, select the files you with to convert, click: OK, then click: OK in the Recognize Text window.
- Note that selecting many files and/or those that are large in size may take several to many minutes to complete OCR processing. If faster response times are required, select fewer files.

An Output Options window will be displayed. Ensure the following are set:
1. Target Folder - If you wish to save the files in the same location as their original source file, select: The Same Folder Selected at Start. If you wish to save the files in a new or different existing location, select: A folder on My Computer.
2. File Naming - It is recommended to select: Add to original file names in order to save the OCR'd files with a unique identifier in their name.
3. Insert After - type: -text.
  - This will create an OCR'd copy of the file with "-text" in its name, differentiating it from its source file.
  - Example: the file "KU logo" will be saved as KU Logo-text.pdf.
4. Check or uncheck the Overwrite existing files checkbox, depending upon whether you would like to overwrite files with the same name or not.
  - It is recommended to uncheck this box.

A Recognize Text - General Settings window will display. Set the language of choice and choose either: Searchable Image or Searchable Image (Exact), then click: OK.
- Searchable image allows you to input a dpi downsample amount. It is recommended to select Searchable Image (Exact) if you don't know what downsample amount you'd like to use.

Using either Finder (Mac) or File Explorer (Windows), navigate to the file location where you saved your files and double-click each to open it.

The PDF will open and text within the image is now recognizable as searchable text.

Article Changelog

1/24/2026

Article updated to basic visual standard.

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