Adobe Acrobat Pro DC has a built-in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature that will recognize most text and allow you to convert image-only PDFs into readable ones. You can recognize text in a couple of ways. Remember to use the highest quality scan possible.

Method 1: Scan and OCR Tool

The Enhance Scans Tool will try to turn scans or photos of paper documents into PDFs with selectable text. This tool will also clean the page's contrast and flatten pages where text may curve from book bindings.

Step 1. Select Scan and OCR Tool

Select the "Scan and OCR" tool from the Tools Pane on the right side of the screen. This will open a toolbar at the top of the screen.

Step 2. Select Enhance Option

To clean up the document quality, select the "Enhance" option from the Enhance Scans toolbar then choose "Scanned Document."

Step 3. Recognize and Enhance

Check the check box for Recognize Text then choose the Enhance button. Once the text recognition is complete, save the document.

Step 4. Correct Recognize Text

Still within Enhance Scans tool, open Recognize Text dropdown and select Correct Recognized Text. Check the Review recognized text check box and navigate through the suspect text found by the tool, correct as necessary, and click accept. Save your document.

Step 5. Auto Tag document

Once all the text has been recognized go to the Tags Pane, right click on No Tags Available. Select Add Tags to Document option. The Auto-Tag function will try to interpret your document based on the size and style of the fonts you have used. Larger and bolder text will typically be recognized as Heading 1 and Heading 2, even if they are not supposed to be headings.

Step 6. Check and Update Document Tags

The auto tagging option will not be 100% correct. Check and update the document tags as necessary. Save your document.

Method 2: Edit PDF Tool

The Edit PDF Tool option will not try to fix the quality of the scan before recognizing for text or give you an option to fix the recognized text.

Step 1. Select Edit PDF tool

Select the "Edit PDF" tool from the Tools Pane on the right side of the screen. 

Acrobat Pro will automatically run an OCR on your document. Once the scan is complete, you should be able to edit and select most of the text in your document. Remember to save your document.

If you are not able to select all text, determine if the text is an image or not. Some images of text or handwriting may not be able to be recognized by an OCR. 

We discourage the use of images of text because the text embedded into images is not able to be rendered by assistive technologies such as screen-readers. At the same time, images of text pose a problem for mobile responsiveness as the images of text could distort and become illegible when opened on a mobile device or tablet. You may choose to try Enhance Scan as another OCR option. Short handwriting section, like signatures, may be tagged as a figure and given an alternative text with its corresponding text. For longer handwritten documents, consider retyping the text into a new document. 

Step 2. Auto Tag document

Once all the text has been recognized go to the Tags Pane, right click on No Tags Available. Select Add Tags to Document option. The Auto-Tag function will try to interpret your document based on the size and style of the fonts you have used. Larger and bolder text will typically be recognized as Heading 1 and Heading 2, even if they are not supposed to be headings.

Step 3. Check and Update Document Tags

The auto tagging option will not be 100% correct. Check and update the document tags as necessary. Save your document.