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A scan is a photograph of a page. Most tools leave it that way: they recognise the words and hide them in an invisible layer under the picture, so the file can be searched but not changed. This app rebuilds the document instead. The words and their positions come from recognition, the structure of the page - headings, columns, tables, captions - is worked out separately, and the page is written again as real text, real tables and real pictures in a Word (.docx) file.
Because the structure is found before the text is placed, a table on the scan comes back as a table with its own columns, not as a wall of loose lines. A form comes back as its captions and values, lined up in pairs the way they were printed. Headings stay headings, and every page of the scan stays a page of the document.
The language of the document is worked out from the pages themselves, so a German or Italian scan needs nothing set by hand. Words that recognition is unsure of are read again from the scan itself rather than guessed, and numbers and identifiers are never rewritten. When the file is ready, one line tells you how many pages were rebuilt, how many words were corrected and how many were left in doubt.
What you get is a .docx you can open in Word, Google Docs or Pages and edit like any other document. Pictures from the scan are carried over with alt text, and headings are tagged as headings, so a screen reader can follow the document - which a scan with an invisible text layer never allows.
There are limits worth knowing. The text is rewritten in one standard font, so the rebuilt page will not match the scan letter for letter: the layout is kept, the typography is not. Handwriting is not what recognition is built for, and handwritten notes may come back as garbled words. A faint, skewed or low-resolution scan costs accuracy on every step. Read the result before you rely on it, and keep your original.
If you do not need to edit anything and want the page to look pixel-identical, the right tool is Make PDF Searchable: it keeps the picture and lays an invisible text layer over it. This one trades the exact look for a document you can change.
Everything runs in the browser, on our servers: no installation, no registration, no CAPTCHA. Up to 10 files at a time, 10 MB each. Uploaded files and download links are removed after 24 hours.
OCR reads the words and where they sit, the structure of the page is worked out separately, and the document is written again as real text, tables and pictures in a .docx.
Files are deleted from our servers after 24 hours, and download links stop working after that.
Drag the scanned PDF into the white area, or click it to pick the file, then press CONVERT. When the pages are rebuilt, download the .docx. Up to 10 files at a time, 10 MB each.
The layout is kept - headings, columns, tables and pictures stay where they were - but the text is rewritten in one standard font, so it will not match the scan letter for letter. If you need the page to look pixel-identical, use Make PDF Searchable instead: it keeps the picture and adds an invisible text layer.
OCR is built for printed text. Handwritten notes and signatures may come back as garbled words, so check them before you rely on the document.
A Word document (.docx) for every file you upload, with the text, tables and pictures of the scan rebuilt as real objects.
Files are deleted from our servers after 24 hours, and the download links stop working after that. No one else has access to them.
Yes. Everything runs on our servers, so any modern browser will do - Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Opera, on any operating system.
