How to edit an English scanned PDF
A scanned PDF contains pictures of pages rather than selectable words. Text recognition can recover the words so you can edit them.
Step by step
- Open the scanned PDF and go to the page you want to edit.
- If the page has no selectable text, choose Recognize English text. The recognition process runs in your browser and may take a moment.
- Compare the recognized words with the original. Correct names, dates, punctuation and any missed characters.
- Review the recognized text in the editor. Export of edited scanned pages is not supported yet; keep your original file.
Which languages are supported?
The current recognition option is configured for English. Other languages, handwriting, faint text and complex page designs may not be recognized accurately.
Does recognition run on every page?
Recognition is started for the current page. Go to another scanned page and run it there when needed. PDFs that already have selectable text can be edited directly.
Will this produce a searchable PDF?
Not yet for scanned pages. Recognition makes words editable inside pebblePDF, but downloading those edited scans is currently blocked. Native PDFs with existing text use searchable text export.