How to turn a scanned PDF into text with OCR
A scanned PDF is just an image of each page: you can't search it or copy its text. Optical character recognition (OCR) reads those images and recovers the text. JapalTools does it in your own browser, in 12 languages, without sending the document to any server.
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Check whether your PDF needs OCR
Open the PDF and try to select a word. If you can't, or if search finds nothing, the document is an image and needs OCR. Pages that already have text are copied as they are.
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Recognize the text step by step
- Open OCR PDF and choose the scanned PDF.
- Choose the language of the text: picking the right language greatly improves the result.
- Click Recognise text and wait. Each page may take a few seconds, because it is processed on your own computer.
- Download the searchable PDF (it looks the same, but now you can search and copy), the Word document or the text as .txt.
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How to get a good result
It works best with printed text scanned sharply. Blurry, skewed or poorly lit photos and handwriting give worse results. Always check the recognized text before relying on it, especially numbers.
What if you have photos instead of a PDF?
- Phone photos: combine them into a PDF with Scan to PDF (the “Document” filter improves contrast) and then run it through OCR.
- A single image: Image to text pulls the text straight out of a photo.
- To edit it in Word: download the OCR result as .docx.
Your document stays private
- No upload: recognition happens in your browser. The first time, only the chosen language is downloaded, from this same site.
- No sign-up: no account or email needed.
- No watermarks in the result.
Your document never leaves your device: JapalTools processes it in your own browser and never uploads it to any server, which matters when it contains personal or tax data.