Edit & Enhance · How-to guide

How to OCR a PDF (Extract Text From Scanned Pages)

A scanned PDF is essentially a collection of images — you can see the text but can't search, select, or copy it. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) reads the text from these images. OneClickPDF's OCR tool supports 16 languages, detects tables, and can produce searchable PDFs with an invisible text layer over the original scans. For quick image OCR while browsing, try our free Chrome extension — PickText OCR — which extracts text from any image on a webpage without leaving your browser.

Updated 26 February 20262 min read5 steps

On this page · 3 sections

Step-by-Step Guide

  1. Open the OCR tool

    Go to the OCR page on OneClickPDF.

  2. Upload your scanned PDF

    Drop the scanned document onto the upload zone. The tool accepts both PDF files and direct image uploads.

  3. Select the language

    Choose the document's language from 16 supported options. Correct language selection significantly improves recognition accuracy.

  4. Run OCR

    Click Start OCR. The tool processes each page, extracting text with word-level confidence scores. Progress is shown per page.

  5. Choose your output

    Download as a searchable PDF (invisible text layer over original images), plain text file, or text-only PDF. Tables are detected automatically with CSV export available.

Frequently Asked Questions

What languages are supported?
16 languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Korean, Arabic, Hindi, and Turkish.
What's a searchable PDF?
A searchable PDF looks identical to the original scan but has an invisible text layer underneath. You can Ctrl+F to find words, select and copy text, and index the document — while the visual appearance stays exactly the same.
Can it handle poor-quality scans?
The tool includes preprocessing options — grayscale conversion, contrast enhancement, and thresholding — to improve recognition on faded, low-contrast, or noisy scans.
Can it extract tables?
Yes. The OCR engine includes table detection. When tables are found, you can export the tabular data as CSV for use in spreadsheets.
Is there a Chrome extension for OCR?
Yes. PickText OCR is a free Chrome extension that lets you right-click any image, screenshot a page, or select a region to extract text instantly. It uses the same Tesseract.js engine and processes everything locally — no server uploads. Get it from the Chrome Web Store.

Transform scanned documents from image-trapped content to searchable, selectable, and copy-able text. With 16 languages and table detection, OneClickPDF's OCR handles documents from around the world — all in your browser.

Conversion guides →Tool comparisons →

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