When is OCR needed for searchable documents?
When you create a new document on your computer in a text editing or word processing program, the text is recognizable to the computer when you reopen the file later, and so OCR is not needed to make the document text-searchable. However, the situation is very different when you create a digital file out of a scanned document. When you use a scanner, the output file is an image in which the text is not readable without special software. Therefore, OCR is needed to recognize the scanned text and transform a document into a format that allows you to work with the text.
How to scan to searchable PDF with OCR
So, what does it take to create a searchable PDF out of a scanned document? You cannot use your scanner to create text-searchable files directly, but if you have OCR software you can convert scanned documents into searchable PDFs. Some programs are able to convert files into PDFs. While you do not necessarily need a special tool to save an image file in a new format, the software can be helpful if you need to convert files in bulk, or if you want to combine file conversion with OCR.
How to use your OCR software
The specifics of using OCR software may vary from one program to another, but the general concepts are the same throughout. When you are selecting an OCR tool for professional use, be sure that it excels in accuracy tests, so that you do not have to worry about the reliability of your results. After familiarizing yourself with the features of the software, select the files that you would like to OCR. Depending on the volume of documents that you are handling, you may need a program with batch processing capabilities, or you can just select single files for OCR. Once you have your OCRed file, use it as you would any other text document: share it, save it for easy accessibility later, or copy and edit its contents.
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