Make a scanned PDF searchable (OCR)
Updated October 21, 2026
A scanned page is a picture. Recognize Text reads the words in it and adds them as invisible text over the picture, so the page looks the same but you can search and select it.
Steps
- Open the scanned PDF and choose Tools › Recognize Text (OCR)….
- Choose All pages or just the current page.
- Leave Skip pages that already have text on, unless you want those pages read again.
- Tick the languages the document is written in, up to three. English comes with the app.
- Optionally tick Optimize scanned pages first to straighten and clean up the pages before they’re read.
- Choose Recognize text. Then save with File › Save (Ctrl+S).
Other languages
The first time you choose a language other than English, PDF Studio downloads it once (a few megabytes) and the button says Download and recognize. After that it works offline. Only the language data is downloaded: your document never leaves your computer.
If something goes wrong
- “Couldn’t download” a language. Check your internet connection and try again, or run it with English only.
- The text comes out wrong. Make sure the right languages are ticked; choosing more languages than the document uses makes recognition slower and less accurate. A cleaner, straighter scan also helps.
Once a page is recognized you can edit its text too.