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How To Make A Pdf Searchable For Free

July 31, 2023 1.5K views

You may realize that you cannot search the text after scanning a paper document into a PDF file. Because your scanner captures the pages as a flat image, there is no text that your PDF viewer can identify. This can be an issue, particularly with text-heavy papers. Search through large PDF files with a lot of text with ease. Fortunately, this is a simple problem to tackle. Continue reading to find out how to make a PDF file searchable. To understand whether some PDFs have searchable text or not. Let us explore the different types of PDFs you may encounter.

1. Text-based PDFs are formed when a document is saved directly as a PDF from a word processor like Microsoft Word or comparable apps.

2. Image PDFs are made by scanning paper documents, photographing them, capturing screenshots, and so on. So, instead of written text in the document, it's only a picture of the text. As a result, the text cannot be searched, chosen, or copied and pasted.

3. OCR PDFs are image-based PDFs that have been converted to text-based PDFs. As a result, they are completely text-searchable. To convert the document to a text-based PDF, optical character recognition (OCR) is used to read the image of the text and put a layer of real text on top.

How To Check Your PDF is Searchable or Not?

To determine whether your PDF is searchable, open it and attempt searching or selecting text using your keyboard or mouse. If you can choose or highlight text in your PDF, it is searchable. If you can't, it's because your PDF isn't searchable.

WPS PDF With OCR is the simplest method to make a PDF searchable without Adobe. It's our low-cost All-in-One Adobe alternative, featuring cutting-edge OCR and text recognition features. With the numerous tools available in WPS Office PDF Editor, you may modify PDF files, compress them to reduced file sizes, or fill out and sign PDF forms – while always keeping them searchable. Learn how to search scanned and flat PDF documents.

1. How To Make A Pdf Searchable Using WPS PDF Converter

Online

Before you can search through your PDF file, you must first get your PDF viewer to identify the content on it. You may accomplish this by converting your PDF to a Word file using WPS online PDF To Word converter; simply follow these three simple steps:

  • To convert your PDF into Word (Searchable text format). Click on the “Select PDF File” button or simply drag your file and drop into the box.

  • When your PDF file is uploaded, it will take 3-4 seconds (depending on your internet speed) to convert it to Word ( editable text) format. 

  • Simply click the “Download” button.

Offline App

  • Open the WPS Office app on your laptop and click on the “PDF to Word” option on the left side.

  • After clicking on the “PDF to Word” option, a pop-up window will open. Click on the “add files” button to add your PDF to be converted. 

  • Choose one of the searchable text format options (.doc, docx) from the “Save as type” tab.

  • Then click “start”and it will finally provide you with an editable text file.

2. How To Make A Pdf Searchable Using Adobe Online Converter

  • Open your web browser and navigate to the PDF to Word converter.

  • Insert your file into the converter. 

  • Save your transformed file.

All text in your PDF file will be recognized by the converter. Simply convert the Word file back to a PDF document, and the content will still be searchable.

Easily Make Your PDF Searchable With WPS PDF

We hope you found this article useful on how to make PDF searchable. As you can see, making a PDF searchable is not as difficult as you may think. Having previously stated, you can quickly and simply make your PDF documents searchable by converting the scanned PDF format to editable Word format. where text can be easy to search. This article also illustrated the best online and offline app to utilize.  Thank you for taking time to read.

FAQs

How to Search in a Scanned PDF?

Press Ctrl+F and it will open up a search window, now search the phrase or text. If you have scanned PDF, then simply convert it to txt form with the help of WPS Office OCR converter.

How Can We Search PDF Text?

Press Ctrl+F or locate the Find operator in WPS PDF Editor or WPS Office (Both can read and edit PDFs).

15 years of office industry experience, tech lover and copywriter. Follow me for product reviews, comparisons, and recommendations for new apps and software.