Last Updated on March 5, 2025 by Dominic
Being able to select, copy, paste, and search for text in a PDF is very helpful. But it can be really annoying and take a lot of time if you can’t recognize the text in a PDF, especially if you have to rewrite everything. Recognizing text in PDFs lets you edit, search, highlight, and work with the text in the document
Some PDFs already have text you can work with, but others don’t. If yours doesn’t, then you’ll need a handy tool to get the job done! UPDF’s OCR tool is the best option as it is cheap to use, allows you to extract handwriting texts and can recognize scanned text in 38 languages.
In this article, we are going to discuss how you can recognize text in PDF with the help of UPDF. Let’s get right into it!
Part 1. How to Recognize Text in Scanned PDF with OCR?
Recognizing text in scanned PDFs can seem tricky, but with UPDF’s OCR feature, it’s quick and easy. Here’s how to do it:
Step 1: Begin by opening the scanned PDF in UPDF.
Step 2: From the toolbar on the right, click on the OCR icon to start the recognition process.
Alt text: click on ocr updf
Step 3: Pick the language of your document from the list. It can recognize text in 38 different languages. For example, this scanned PDF is in English, you can select the “English”. After the language is selected, click on the “Perform OCR” button. UPDF will scan and recognize the text in the PDF automatically.
Alt text: click on perform ocr updf
Step 4: After the OCR process completes, you can go to the “Edit PDF” section to make changes or copy the recognized text for further use.
Now, your scanned PDF text is ready to be edited, searched, or copied as needed.
Part 2. How to Recognize Text in Scanned PDF with AI?
If there is handwritten text included in the PDF or the language you need is not available in the OCR language options, you can use the AI feature of UPDF to recognize the text. The AI technology that UPDF features allows you to extract handwritten text or text in unsupported languages.
Here’s how you can recognize text in scanned PDFs with AI:
Step 1: Open the scanned PDF that has handwritten text or text in non-supported language. Click on the “UPDF AI” icon at the right-side corner.
Step 2: Go to the chat mode feature within UPDF AI, click on the “Screenshot” to screenshot the area where you need to extract, and type a prompt for UPDF to extract the handwriting text from the scanned PDF.
Alt text: extract handwriting text from the image updf ai
Step 3: After the text is extracted, you can easily copy and use it however you like.
You feel confused about why to use UPDF instead of other tools. The most important reason is that UPDF is cheap, you can check its price and upgrade here.
Part 3. FAQS
Q1. How to Recognize Text in PDF with Adobe Acrobat DC?
Follow the below-mentioned steps to recognize text in PDF with Adobe Acrobat DC:
- Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat DC and click on the
- Next, click on Select “Scanand ” After this, select recognize text.
- From the drop-down menu, click on “In this file.”
- Select “Settings” in the toolbar
- Choose Searchable Image or Searchable Image (Exact) for the output, and then click on “Ok.”
It’s important to note that to use the recognize text feature in Adobe Acrobat, you’ll need to get the paid version of the software. If you don’t have a subscription, you can use UPDF, which is a much more affordable option.
Q2. How to Recognize Handwritten Text in PDF?
Simply use UPDF’s AI to recognize handwritten text in a PDF. Go to chat mode in UPDF AI after opening the scanned PDF with handwriting text, screenshot, then, enter the prompt to extract!
Q3. Why is Text Not Recognized in PDF?
In general, if you text is not recognized in PDF is because that your PDF is image only or scanned. For this case, you can use UPDF’s OCR to make it editable or use its AI to extract text.
Conclusion
Knowing how to recognize text in PDF can make your documents much easier to work with. Whether it’s for editing, searching, or copying text, UPDF is a great tool to help you do this quickly and easily. With its OCR and AI features, UPDF makes recognizing text, even handwritten ones, simple and effective. Try UPDF today and see how it can help you work smarter with your PDFs!