You receive a form or scanned document but cannot copy a sentence from it. The file is a PDF, yet its contents may not be recognised as text. Before choosing software, identify what you actually need to do with the document.<\/p>\n
Select a few words, search for a term visible on the page, then copy a short sentence into a blank document. If nothing can be selected, the page may be a scanned image. If copying produces mistakes, text recognition may be imperfect. Security restrictions can also prevent certain actions; ask the sender for an authorised version rather than trying to bypass them.<\/p>\n
Optical character recognition, or OCR, analyses an image to recognise its words. Depending on the tool, it can make the document searchable, extract text or prepare an editable version. Adobe explains the difference between a scanned image and searchable text in its text recognition documentation<\/a>.<\/p>\n OCR does not guarantee accuracy. A single mistaken character can matter in an invoice, reference number or table. Always review any information you plan to reuse.<\/p>\n A complete, straight and legible page is a better starting point than a blurred or cropped photograph. Keep the original and work on a copy. With complex documents, inspect columns, tables, accented characters and page order after processing. Adobe\u2019s guidance on editing scans<\/a> highlights image quality and preserving the layout.<\/p>\n Before uploading a document to an online service, check your organisation\u2019s rules and the service\u2019s data handling terms. A file containing customer information is not a suitable test document. Use a copy without sensitive details to assess the results.<\/p>\nChoose the feature, not just the application name<\/h2>\n
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Prepare a readable source file<\/h2>\n
Think about confidentiality<\/h2>\n