How to Create Searchable PDFs on Mac OS X

Have you scanned in your paper files into digital versions, but are disappointed that the resulting PDF files are not searchable?  Don't worry, there is an easy solution: OCR (optical character recognition).  PDF OCR X, is an application for Mac OS X that can perform the OCR conversion.

Steps:

1. Download PDF OCR X.  (The Community Edition is free, and will work with single-page PDFs).
2. Open the DMG file, and copy the PDF OCR X icon into your Applications folder. 

   

   The DMG file you get from downloading PDF OCR X contains the PDF OCR X application.  You should copy this into your Applications directory.

3. Open PDF OCR X (by double-clicking the PDF OCR X icon).  This will display a little window where you can drag your PDF files to be converted.
   
   
   
4. Drag your scanned PDF file onto the PDF OCR X window.
5. In the OCR dialog box, select the language of the document, and select "Output Mode" to be "Searchable PDF".  (If you selected "Text output" it would extract the text of the PDF as plain text).
   
   
   
    Then click the "Convert" button.
6. Wait a minute while PDF OCR X runs the conversion.  When it is complete, it will open your PDF in Preview.
7. Test it out.  Try searching for some text in the PDF (using Preview).
   
   
   

Video Tutorial

How to add a password to a PDF file on Mac OS X

If you have a PDF file that you want to keep private, you may consider encrypting it with a password so that users would have to enter that password before being able to view the contents of the PDF.
On Mac OS X, this is very easy to do.

Steps:

1. Open the PDF in Preview
2. Select "File" > "Export..."
   
   
   
3. In the "Save" dialog box, check the "Encrypt" checkbox.
   
   
   
4. Enter in the password, and verify it.
5. Press Save

That's all there is to it.

Video Tutorial

How to Extract a Single Page from a PDF on Mac OS X

There are some times when you have a large PDF file and you want to extract a single page (or a range of pages) into a separate PDF file.  This may be helpful if you want to use the free version of a conversion program (e.g. PDF OCR X) that will only handle single-page PDFs and you want to choose specifically which page to convert.

Mac OS X makes this very simple.

Steps:

1. Open the PDF in Preview
   
   

   

   A 50-page PDF file opened in the OS X Preview application.

2. Select "File" > "Print"
   
   
   
3. In the "Print" dialog box, select "Single" or "Range" in the "Pages" drop-down, depending on whether you want to extract a single page or a range of pages.

   

   The "Print" dialog.  Selecting "Single" allows us to extract a single page.  Selecting "Range" allows us to select a range of pages.

4. Click the "PDF" button in the lower left corner of the dialog, and select "Save as PDF..."
   
   
   
5. Select the location where you want the resulting 1-page PDF to be saved.
   

That's all there is to it.

Video Tutorial

How to Convert Scanned PDFs to Text with OCR on Mac OS X

This is a quick tip to show you how to convert a PDF file to text on Mac OS X.  This is a common requirement if you have a PDF that was produced by scanning a physical document, so it contains text that is embedded as an image.

You can use the free program, PDF OCR X, to easily perform the conversion using OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

Steps:

1. Download PDF OCR X Community Edition for Mac OS X

   

   Contents of DMG file after downloading.  You should copy the PDF OCR X icon into your Applications directory.

2. Open PDF OCR X.  You should see a little window open where you can drag your PDF file.  Drag the PDF file that you wish to convert onto this window.

   

   PDF OCR X window.  Drag the PDF file onto this to convert it to text.

3. Select the language of the text, and select output mode "Text".  (If you select searchable PDF it will make the PDF searchable.  Text output will extract the text of the PDF and save it in a text file).

   

   The conversion dialog to choose your OCR X settings.  If you want to extract the text, then leave "Output format" as text.  Note you can add additional language packs if you need to convert French, Chinese, German, Japanese, and many other languages of text.

4. Start editing the text.
   
   
   

You may also want to check out this post from another blog on setting up an automated OCR conversion involving PDF OCR X.

Video Tutorial